UK: New Research From Deloitte Shows Book Purchasing Has Reached Digital Tipping Point

From a summary of a new report published by Deloitte.

New research from Deloitte on attitudes to the consumption of media shows that the average UK household spends £900 on media a year, with one off purchases such as books, DVDs and newspapers representing 52% of their total media spend. The new report “The Digital Divide” paints a snapshot of a typical media consumer, their newspaper reading habits, attitudes to video gaming, social networking, and television viewing behaviours.
80% of respondents say they read newspapers online or in print, although only 51% pay for it themselves. Another 10% only read free newspapers and further 10% get their newspaper or online news access paid for by someone else.
Print newspapers remain more trusted than online sources, but only marginally 34% trust the news in print to be accurate, compared to 29% who say the same about online sources. Over 65s are the most sceptical, only 31% believe what they read in print and 18% believe what they read online.
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For the first time a majority of respondents (51%) said they buy more digital books than physical copies.
The most popular way to find out about new books is Amazon (39%) compared to chain bookshops (22%) and only 7% in an independent bookstore. Friend’s recommendations and word of mouth were the second most influential at 30%.
More than half of respondents (55%) said they saw Facebook as a source of entertainment and 64%^[iii] said they use Facebook to communicate with others. A third of respondents (36%) said their main reason for using social networks was to discover new content.

Direct to Full Text Report (44 pages; PDF)
Read the Complete News Release/Summary/Methodology

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