Some interesting news . . .

This is from Cindi Myers' weekly Market News . . .

Last week I shared information from the Book Industry Study Group's Making Information Pay 2009 conference about the state of the publishing industry. I want to continue that report this week, with information from Kelly Gallagher, v-p of publishing services at R.R. Bowker , who spoke on "The Customer's Always Right: Who is today's book consumer?" The average book reader last year was 45 years old. Women comprise 65% of buyers. Of all Americans 13 or older, 50% bought a book last year. The average age of the most frequent book buyer is in the 50s. The average price paid for a book last year was $10.08. Unit sales (number of books sold) for the year to date are down 1.2%.31% of all books purchased last year were impulse purchases, and 28% of purchases involved readers planning to buy a book, but not knowing what they wanted. Thus more than 50% of book buys are impulse purchases. 41% of people earning more than $100,000 a year buy comics and graphic novels. 41% of all books purchased are bought by people earning less than $35,000, and most people in the U.S. earn less than $35,000.The average book reader now spend 15 hours a week online, more than for TV. Digital book sales grew 125% last year and represent 1.5% of the trade. Digital book purchases by those 64 and over rose 183% last year. Seniors are the largest users of Kindles. 48% of e-books are read on computers. Kindles have a 22% market share; the iPhone has 20% of the market. Last year for the first time online became the "No. 1 selling channel," and accounted for 21% of sales.Book clubs are still significant sales channels for reaching older readers.The fiction market is predominantly female. The one area of fiction in which men predominate is science fiction, where 55% of buyers are male.

You can view a slideshow of Mr. Gallagher's presentation at http://tinyurl. com/pqnjy2