70 percent of Kindle owners over 40?
Amazon's marketing to a more youthful audience, but the older set are the early adopters.
(Credit: Amazon)Back in March, I did a post titled, "What's the average age of Kindle owners?" I cited a thread in Amazon.com's forums discussing Kindle owners' ages.
Well, I have a little follow-up on the whole issue. Apparently, someone went ahead and tabulated 700 of the responses in that Amazon thread (that represents about 75 percent of all the posts) and broke out the numbers. Here they are:
- 0 - 19: 5%
- 20 - 29: 10%
- 30 - 39: 15%
- 40 - 49: 19.5%
- 50 - 59: 23%
- 60 - 69: 19.5%
- 70 - 79: 6%
- 80+: 2%
Like I said in my previous post, if you look at the Amazon thread, a lot of senior folks bought the Kindle--and now the Kindle 2--partially because the digital reader is easier to handle than regular books for arthritis sufferers. It also helps that you can increase the font size, if you have trouble viewing small print in books.
Amazon is in a bit of battle with publishers who tend to think that e-book sales are cannibalizing their print books sales. However, as the blog Marginal Revolution points out, comments from seniors saying they're able to read more now that they own Kindles helps "Amazon's pseudo-statistical case that e-book purchases are incremental/additive, rather than cannibalistic of their print sales."
I agree. Any Kindle owners, young, old, or young at heart, feel the same way?
Update: Kindle Culture has an even more complete breakdown of the posts on that Amazon thread.
(Source: Publishers Lunch Deluxe via Marginal Revolution)
Hunkered down in New York City, Executive Editor David Carnoy covers the gamut of gadgets and writes his Fully Equipped column, which carries the tag line "The electronics you lust for." He's also the author of "Knife Music," a novel. E-mail David. Follow David on Twitter. 
If you really read a lot/wanted the convenience of the Kindle, then you'd pay their asking price knowing it's fair.
If they could get textbook publishers on board, then trade off of $350 in comparison to the textbook portion of the average college student's bill per semester makes it seem worth it.
I personally know quite a few college students who are hard working and put aside the savings for the Kindle. Heck, some of them put it down as a school expense.
For the record, I'm not a Kindle owner, nor do I have a great enough interest to get one lol. I simply prefer hard copies, but wouldn't mind paying for an ebook copy if it appealed to me in the first place.
I gott my Kindle for convenience and to reduce clutter. I have loved the convenience at "at my fingertips" availability of my music since I digitized my music library. I saw no reason why switching to a Kindle should not be equally satisfying. I found the price less shocking when I compared it to the cost of my iPod. I did get the Kindle for my birthday so it was a special occasion large purchase. I do still read physical books sometimes, I'm not re-buying books I already own (except perhaps some classics like Jane Austen & Jane Eyre), paperbacks are ideal for floating in the pool, there is no way I'd do that with my Kindle!
When I showed my Kindle to a friend who is a student, she went nuts! She said if her textbooks were available on Kindle she would get one just to save her back from lugging all those heavy books around.
I haven't yet figured out how to share content with my 10 year old. It used to be if I read a book he was interrested in, I would pass it on to one of HIS two overflowing bookshelves when I was finished reading. I am not prepared to let him operate my Kindle. So far I have handled this by reading aloud to him, but I won't want to do that with every book.
I thought I would miss a physical book. Guess what? I don't. At all. I actually think I read faster with the Kindle and versus a physical book, the Kindle is much easier to hold and use.
No doubt the Kindle needs some improvements but I must say Amazon is off to a great start.
Now, while I don't have a Kindle but checked one out from a friend. The screen is very neat and unlike most standard back-lit LCDs. If you get a chance, check it out. It's VERY cool.
On the note about Amazon, I recently came across an interesting table (thanks to PC World) that details the discounts on Amazon.
It is at http://www.uberi.com
Maybe someone will find it useful too. It's certainly a bit amusing.
so let's think a bit about what 'over 40' can mean. it *can* mean that we were in our 20's, 30's or 40's & up -- in the 80's!
those of us on the 'young' end of that who didn't just go screaming through college straight into jobs with typewriters and file cabinets entered the world of automation staring at amber screens showing us the contents of disk drives run on 286, then 386, then 486, then pentium etc. processors. we learned the DOS commands. remember that MS-DOS thingy? that's right around when bill gates was getting really rich.
and the 60-69's are the slice of humanity who *automated their workplaces*. in 1986, at age 25, i was spending hours and hours a week sitting in front of a computer, doing work on it. learning pathnames and DOS commands. many of which still work, but are not documented. i've had an active e-mail account, uninterrupted, since 1988. oh, and -- i'm a giiiiiiirl! with humanities degree!
today's youth do not 'know computers'. they understand user-interface conventions. half the time they can't find that file they just downloaded. but they're content to sit back and let their less-automated parents think they're geniuses.
even despite the obviousness of this, in the very air we breathe there's some idea that 'over 40' kindle users have finally found something to attract them to technology, and look! it's that old-fashioned pastime of *reading*. silly. i'm 47, and i bought a laptop before i bought my first car. and i spent the same amount of money on both things.
this idea that the young understand computers and the older people don't, is just really not that dead-on; and it will become less so, not moreso, with the passing of time. think about it. that meme was started in the late 80's. when *my* cohort was 'the young who understand computers'. our 'old folks' (my grandparents' generation) from that time are, in sadly great measure, no longer with us. the guy who was our sysadmin back then is still in the workforce. and if i'm past 40, well, he's got to be *decently* past 60. so now, years later, the 'older generation' -- are the people who *invented the technology*.
Most of the youths you're referring to who can't 'find that file they just downloaded' usually don't proclaim they know what they're doing. In fact, a lot of those youths admit their ignorance.
Then there's the next segment of youths who think they know what they're doing but are really putting up a facade with their googling skills and constant nagging on various forums and blogs on why something they did didn't work out.
And then there are those who are actually worth something and can think outside of the box. These are the ones carrying tech into the future. Relative to the previous generation, this segment's probably a larger group than your group was. While we're on that note, this generation's use of tech's a lot more involved than was your generation's. While navigating with no GUIs may have been the mundane task for you back then, was majority of your college classmates able to comprehend the idea like how millions of the non-tech-savy youths can with their downloading and syncing their ipods for today?
Yes, I just divided up your stereotype into different segments. If your arthritis is going to make it hard to properly rant here, you can stop and have your apple sauce and take your afternoon nap, old timer :)
I think the bigger question is, are more young people not buying Kindles because they don't really read? I read significantly more than most of my peers--again which makes the kindle "worth it" for me. In general, I think many members of my generation don't have the attention span for reading.
Yes.
I don't want to pay room and board for hoards of paper books. If ever there was a good way to preserve the environment, it's getting your books electronically.
As for the younger set not buying Kindles--I don't see them reading that much. They're off watching YouTube and Hulu, Twittering their 140 char treatises on their enriched lives...etc...
the e-ink reader is the 'killer app' for reading -- much as golf clubs are the 'killer app' for playing golf. and. where else will you find shelving for 1500 books for less than $400? have your books & not have to box & move them; store your books & not have to buy more furniture.
killer. app.
You can't sell or lend out the books.
I do buy several MP3 albums a month too, and end up buying CD for only a few of them, the meaningful ones.
Come to think of it, I also do the same with movies. In my family we only rent movies (grocery store and occasional video on demand streaming). We only buy DVD for those special movies we want to possess and keep around.
I'm below 40, so is my wife and she has a Kindle too :)
Books that I did not intend to re-read did get offered to friends, but (since I am usually paying less for e-books) I think the recipients of my cast-offs are more likely than I am, to see lack of hand-me-downs as a drawback.
I do like that I am not consuming paper with my Kindle... when I look into my mailbox and pull out a big pile of advetising circulars which are INTENDED to be disposable.... since I HAVE a Kindle I like to feel like at least perhaps I'm helping to offset some of that junk-mail!
I can carry as much of my collection around as I wish, in a smaller, lighter format than my ever-present "security book" without which I never leave home--'cause you never know when you'll have some time to kill and really NEED a good read. I can quit adding to my clutter of hard-copy, and whittle down the stash as finances and availability permit. I can enjoy instant gratification as new reads become available, and test the waters for free as I please. In other words, I can do well AND do good, for myself, my home environment as well as the larger environment we all depend on, and the economy, all with one device. A device that will also permit me to increase font size when my progressive lenses reach their limits for tired eyes.
Is this a wonder-gadget or what? Now if it DID have MP3, with perhaps the "World Peace Option", Amazon, MS and Apple could start duking it out for total world domination. In the meantime, when the next Katrina looms, the first thing I'll grab as I head out the door will be my Kindle.
One thing I've noticed about book availability is that new and very old materials are pretty readily available; it's the 10-50 year old stuff that's still mostly in no man's land. So let me encourage all Kindle owners to hound Amazon and the assorted publishers on that score. USE the one-click icon that now appears in every book listing on Amazon that is not Kindle-available to put in your request. BE the squeaky wheel for the ultimate good of the entire Kindle-using order. Your fellow geezer-readers are counting on you!
*fap*fap*fap*
Perhaps in the future, publishers will offer the ebook purchase at a discount if you've already purchased a hard copy, or maybe even include it in the hard copy purchase (much like how digital copies are coming with hard copy music/video purchases).
If I were to make my spending more efficient, I'd probably ask myself whether or not the reading warrants a hard copy purchase.
Age: 20
Readership: Modestly moderate
- by productvibe May 5, 2009 10:59 AM PDT
- With textbooks available the average age is sure to go down as college students adopt. Amazon keeps innovating, gotta luv it. Soon enough college students will no longer get gouged on their textbook purchases. For more info on the Kindle see: http://www.productvibe.com/kindle-2-e-book-reader.html
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