September 19, 2012 | 9:52 pm
By Dan Eldridge
www.teleread.com
We talk quite often here at TeleRead about how quickly e-reader ownership is growing—and as a result, how strongly the print publishing industry is feeling the digital blow—but sometimes it’s easier to comprehend (and retain) statistical data when it’s presented to us in the form of the ever-popular inforgraphic.
The first graphic below, by the way, comes from Schools.com, which seems to have produced an infographic about nearly every career opportunity under the sun: How to become a firefighter; How to become a sonographer; etc. (The chart-graphic beneath it comes from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.)
At any rate, the first section of the infographic references a stat that I’m sure most of us remember seeing multiple stories about, right after the end of the 2011 holiday season: The big news was that in the period of just one month—between December 2011 and January 2012—the percentage of Americans who owned e-readers nearly doubled, from 10 percent to 19 percent. (That figure, by the way, refers only to owners of dedicated e-reading devices. It doesn’t include tablets.)
The reason I mention this is because I’m already waiting—patiently, I might add—for the first of the e-reader-sales prediction stories that are all but certain to appear sometime after Thanksgiving. This has definitely been The Year of the Tablets, and as Adam Turner recently pointed out in the Sydney Morning Herald, “e-Ink might be the best tool for the [e-reading] job but, just like cameras, the best e-book reader is the one you’ve got with you. For many people, once they own a tablet they’re more likely to buy e-books on that device rather than carry around a separate e-Ink e-book reader.”
Which brings up a good point: I’m sure we’ll see more stories about tablet sales than e-reader sales once January 2013 rolls around. But someone, of course, will release e-reader sales statistics after the holidays end, and I suspect that will be one of the most eye-opening digital reading stories of the season—assuming the numbers turn out to be particularly higher or lower than what most expects will be predicting in November and December. In the meantime, scroll down to see the e-reading numbers we already do know.
