Printed books still trump e-books

On March 31, 2009, I conducted an unscientific poll on my deviantArt page asking whether people preferred reading printed books or e-books.

See the poll

2,529 people participated in this poll. At the time, I thought that since the dA community is relatively young, we should see a small but decent sampling in favor of e-books. After all, the younger generation should be more receptive to e-books than the generations used to printed books, right?

Nope. A whopping 90% of respondents still chose printed books. And after another poll I did asking about the ages of people on dA (in which 1,727 people participated), I found out that 82% of them are under the age of 24.

I personally have grown fond of e-books and read a lot of books on my iPhone now. However, it looks like even the younger generations still prefer printed books, so all the reports we are seeing of the "death of traditional publishing" probably still have a ways to go. This is further backed up in an article by the author of the Four Hour Work Week.

Not sure what that says in terms of whether it's good or bad, but it's just interesting for me to see in (semi) solid numbers. :)