We already noticed it in the daily twitter stream: when it comes to book reviews on twitter, the 'low' genres (at least according to connoisseurs) dominate the charts: fantasy, diaries of disease sufferers, 'regional work', howto's and erotica. No news, you may say, but there is more to it. Thanks to the advent of the e-reader, publishers (at least in America) are gaining insight into what people actually read. And that picture does not exactly reassure proponents of cultural upliftment of the people.
Preliminary US research of the e-book market shows that genres such as Christian novels, science fiction and paranormalia are remarkably popular. More popular, too, than seemed from physical book sales so far. The reasons for this are interesting, although it will remain speculation until more hard research data is available.
What is the case?
People who buy a Kindle first load the thing up with a whole mountain of classics and must-haves. In America, think of the collected works of Dickens or Shakespeare. Often Amazon offers such collections of classics at rock-bottom prices too, and they can also be downloaded for a trifle from Google Books.
After that, buying and downloading behaviour changes dramatically. So radically, in fact, that one might wonder whether all those classics are being read. Indeed, the market for books that publishers and critics turn their noses up at seems much larger than expected. Self-published books are in great demand and the oh-la-la genre is much more popular than expected.
The reason might well be trivial. With an ereader in your hand, no one knows what you are actually reading. If you can still use a book with an important cover in a public place to get a partner or impress bystanders, the Kindle does not show the contents at the back. So you can shamelessly read pornography or vague science fiction, while bystanders find you mostly interesting and innovative.
The e-reader thus personalises reading in such a way that 'peer pressure', or social pressure, plays a much smaller role in the choice of what you read, than hitherto. This democratisation of reading behaviour opens up totally new horizons for marketers and publishers.
The only question is whether that world suits them.
Source: The Guardian
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It may also indicate that people find the price for an e-book too high.
Besides, I have no need for a physical book at all since I read from a screen. I find it easy, you are not left with a pile of paper that you have to put away afterwards or find a way to sell on Bol.
Incidentally, I understood from a Primera employee that the Western magazines full of spelling mistakes are in great demand.
I think Folco is right. Beautiful, good literature is what you want to get your hands on.
I know Amazon.com has a lot of cheap e-books, many of them self-published (by the authors themselves), and these are indeed very often romances, erotic stories and fantasy. I think the (cheap) offer in this case determines what gets downloaded. The good books are more expensive so people are more likely to reach for the cheaper (and thus lighter) genre.
Isn't the question also which books people read more as e-books?
I myself read the books I would normally buy a cheap paperback of (sf, fantasy ed.) rather digitally than good literature, which I really prefer to read on paper.
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