Who is reading eBooks? Show me the market!

According to GfK MRI, the country’s leading provider of magazine audience ratings, multimedia research data and penetrating insights into consumers’ behavior and motivations, eReader ownership by adults has tripled in less than two years and women prefer eReaders.

GfK MRI describes eReaders as “a portable, wireless reading device that allows you to download and read electronic books, magazines and newspapers. It is not a laptop, cell phone or PDA.”

Approximately 5.9 million US adults own an eReader, according to the latest data from GfK MRI; this is up from 2.1 million owners in the March-October period of 2009 when GfK MRI first began asking consumers about their usage of devices like the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader.  The most recent data shows that now 49% of eReader owners are male and 51% are women.

According to Anne Marie Kelly, SVP of Marketing and Strategic Planning at GfK MRI, “while electronic tablets have created lots of buzz amid increased competition in the market, eReaders continue to be very popular items.”

What are eReader owners reading on their devices?  Books are still the medium of choice among eReader owners.  An overwhelming majority of the eReader owners interviewed by GfK MRI in the last 12 months of ending October 31 2010 (74.9%) had read a book on their device in the last six months, compared to newspapers (17.6%) and magazines (15.3%).  Women are 23% more likely than men to have read a book on their eReader in the last six months.  Drilling down to the brand level, the Amazon Kindle appears to be the reader favorite as women are 63% more likely than men to own an Amazon Kindle and are twice as likely to own a Barnes and Noble Nook.

What does this mean for the indie author?  In the past, traditional publishing had barred the gates into the market for many new authors.   The invent of eReaders levels the playing field and  increases the possibility of getting your independent works noticed by potentially millions of readers to whom a new writer would have had no exposure to before.  Now, any author can get his or her works published and made available. Publishing independently blows the gates wide open for new indie authors wanting to get their works in front of this ever-increasing reader base.

So what do you have to lose?  Keep writing!  Stay Independent!