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Amazon Survey Results in a Disjointed Collection of Factoids About Reading in China

kindle chineseApple chose the wrong time to get their ebookstore shut down in China.

China Daily reports Amazon China and the Xinhua News Agency have released a reading survey in celebration of World Book Day on Saturday (in China, that would be yesterday already).

I can’t find the source of the survey on the Xinhua site or Amazon.cn, but CD said that more than 11,000 people from about 500 cities in China were surveyed about their reading habits.

The details are less than complete, but according to my source more than 80% of the survey group read for at least half an hour every day, with around half that number reporting that they spent at least an hour a day reading. That includes both digital and analog, given human nature is probably more aspirational than real.

There’s no mention of how many of those surveyed read ebooks vs paper books, but China Daily does note that "the penetration rate for digital reading rose for a third year", and that "ebook readers ranked at 84 percent, up 6 percent year-on-year".

Of course, it’s not clear what that means in this context (if you know of a source which can shed light on this, please leave a comment).

In fact, any new source of info would be appreciated. The rest of the China Daily piece was a collection of factoids with no context or depth:

Fifty-six percent of the people in the survey believe that the cost of digital reading is small and most of the e-reading devices are handy and easy to carry. The report also shows that Amazon’s Kindle for the first time beat smartphones as the favorite electronic reading device. Meanwhile, the more expensive an e-book is, the more likely a reader is to finish reading it.

The survey also showed that different groups of people have different reading preferences. While people born in the 1960’s and 00’s prefer deep reading, those in the 1980’s and 90’s prefer shallow reading. Men’s purposes in reading are relatively more practical. Thirty-two percent of them read for career development and knowledge enhancement rather than interests.

Unlike reading other surveys from other countries such as Japan, the UK, or Germany, it’s difficult to judge what this survey means or whether it’s valid.

What do you know?

 

 

 

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Comments


Yuying He April 24, 2016 um 12:00 pm

According to the report, participants who read both ebooks and paper books accounted for 84%, who read "paper books only" accounted for 16%,and "ebooks only" accounted for 4%.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/book/2016-04/22/c_128921238.htm (in Chinese)

On the same day, there was another reading report?13th?released by Chinese Academy of Press and Publication, with a larger sample. The mean value of paper books read per year is 4.58, and 3.26 for ebooks.

?I live in China.?

Nate Hoffelder April 24, 2016 um 1:20 pm

Thank you!


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