Consumers Not Convinced They Need E-Reader

With the success of Amazon's Kindle reigniting competition in the e-reader market, the question of when the devices might join cell phones and digital cameras as mainstream consumer gadgets is once again raised. Mark Walsh writes for MediaPost that findings from a new NPD Group report suggest it won't be overnight. 

The study found that 40% of those surveyed were only "somewhat interested" or "not interested at all" in buying an e-reader. How come? Of those who don't want one, 70% said it was because they prefer the feel of an actual book. 

Among the 37% who were either "very" or "somewhat" interested in obtaining an e-reader, one of the main factors was the ability to buy and store multiple books, magazines, and newspapers. More than half of consumers were interested in features already offered in current devices like the Kindle's wireless capability and the Sony's Reader's touchscreen. 

"Today's e-reader offerings are delivering capabilities that are in demand by consumers," said Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis at NPD, in a statement. "However, some features that could enhance the appeal of more popular content, such as color, remain on the drawing board." 

Sales of the Kindle have been difficult to pin down since Amazon has not provided figures, but Citi analyst Mark Mahaney has projected that the second-generation of the device could sell up to 1 million units in 2009. That would be more than double the estimated 400,000 the original sold. Last month, Amazon cut the price of the Kindle 2 from $359 to $299 in a bid to accelerate adoption. 

Upping the ante, Sony introduced two new versions of its Reader: a $199 pocket edition and a larger $299 model with an improved touchscreen. It also dropped the price of new releases and bestsellers from $11.99 to $9.99, matching Amazon's e-book pricing. 

In an interview, Rubin said price wasn't the biggest barrier to buying e-readers cited in the NPD survey, "but lowering the entry price will help spur demand." He also pointed out that people expressed a greater interest in accessing newspapers and magazines on e-readers than books. That could be a promising sign for the larger-screen Kindle DX, designed for reading publications other than books.

"But these beg for technologies that are not commercially viable today, such as flexible displays and color electronic ink," noted Rubin. But heightened competition should help to encourage innovation as well as drive down prices. Barnes & Noble launched its own e-bookstore with bestsellers priced at $9.99. The book chain also entered into a partnership with Plastic Logic to supply content for its e-reader due out early next year. 

A separate study Forrester Research suggests Amazon could be vulnerable if competitors can better serve subsequent waves of e-reader adopters. The report indicates that unlike the mostly male, tech-savvy Kindle buyers so far, future prospects for e-readers are more likely to be female, less tech-optimistic, and big readers (five books a month on average). So it sounds like whichever company can win over women will end up winning the e-reader race.

PR Challenge: Consumers Use Different Media for Different News

According to a yearlong Pew Excellence in Journalism study, consumers are showing different preferences for where they get different kinds of news. The study also found that for news consumers, the news has become a social medium, with nearly half saying they receive recommendations and referrals from friends, co-workers and relatives.
For instance, the breakdown of the percentage of the news hole dedicated by traditional press follows: politics/government, 15 percent; foreign events, 9 percent; economy, 10 percent; technology, 1 percent, and health and medicine, 11 percent.
Blogs and traditional media share a similar focus on politics/government (17 percent) and foreign events (12 percent). Twitter only devotes 6 percent of its news hole to politics/government, but YouTube is the highest, at 21 percent with 26 percent dedicated to foreign events. One might not ordinarily think of YouTube as a news resource, but we have seen its rise in importance over the past year, with amateur video becoming the only medium for receiving news of the Iran riots.
YouTube only dedicates 1 percent of its capacity to technology, probably because tech does not lend itself to viral video. Twitter, on the other hand, devoted 43 percent of its news hole to tech news — much of it about Twitter itself.
So what does this mean for your public relations strategy?
It means the traditional means of distributing news to consumers is obsolete. Besides the fact that the number of journalists has shrunk dramatically in the past several years, social media enables P.R. practitioners to bypass that intermediate layer and go directly to consumers with their news.
The PEJ study provides a more detailed set of guidelines about where we can direct the different kinds of news to the appropriate medium for dissemination.

Luxury's New Niche: Guitar Aficionado

Guitar Aficionado’s publisher says the magazine's readership consists "of the very upper echelon of guitar buyers; those who spend upwards of five figures for instrument, and consider it a work of art." Though from reviewer Karl Greenberg’s perspective a five-figure instrument had better be a player, and the magazine features rock stars and their lairs, anyone who can drop that kind of money on a work of art is unlikely to be a serious musician. That takes too much time.


The American guitar-collector phenom tracks the baby boom, the instrument's electrification and consequent graduation from rhythm instrument in big bands to (with Charlie Christian's help among others) solo instrument, blues, rock n' roll, etc. and its explosive proliferation in style and variety. But the first instrument of today's law firm partners, plastic surgeons, bankers, and account executives  was very likely an air guitar. That's Guitar Aficionado's reader base. 

The publication, however, which claims a circulation of 100,000, with median household income of $218,400 and net worth of $1.3 million, is a bit disingenuous. It's not only not really about players (the instruments, not the people), it's really not about guitars that much, either. But that's OK, because its readers likely regard collectible guitars either as investments like that self-winding watch carved from a scimitar blade that happens to tell time on the moon. Or, like "Rosebud" from Citizen Kane, guitars are seen as whimsical talismans for a lawyer or oral surgeon to rub now and then so they can recapture that boyhood dream of playing "More Than a Feeling" in front of 10,000 screaming women.

The tag line for the book is "Luxury's New Niche." But as is the case with Cigar Aficionado (published by a different company), the mag uses the eponymous product to talk up the collector lifestyle: private islands, bungalows, collector cars, movie stars, rock stars, the wealthy, the successful, the Concours d'Elegance crowd. There's a story about Paul Stanley's house, with a shot of him in front of his collection of remarkably unattractive guitars. There's a piece on diving watches, another on rum, and one on rock fossil David Crosby's California wine country hangout. There's a story about Maui. There's something about a $1 million gold-topped guitar.  The spring issue had Jeff Bridges on the cover with the title, "The Dude Collects" and a story about his guitars and his sprawling house. Lenny Kravitz graced the cover of the summer ish, and the story about him details his recording studio in an Airstream trailer parked on a beach in the Carib. These could all be in Travel & Leisure, or AARP for that matter. As expected, the photos are gorgeous and the writing's solid.

The occasional guitar story notwithstanding, the magazine could quite easily be called Whisky Aficionado, Lobster Aficionado, or Gnarly Watch Aficionado. No one would be the wiser. It falls into the "I'm targeting your urologist" shelter-book boilerplate of beautiful-house-owned-by-gracious-celebrity photo essays and lifestyle journalism.

As for the upper echelon of guitar PLAYERS, there's an entirely different story. Steve Khan played a couple of workman-like thin hollow bodies, Gibsons, with his name on them; Peter Bernstein, some sort of hand-made jobbie, same with Jim Hall. Alex De Grassi played a gig in Tallahassee a long time ago, but not many remember what he played, or paid for that matter. But, really, it doesn't matter too terribly much. He could make a cigar box sound good. 


Seems this magazine is much more than a source of information for the average guitar player -it's a lifestyle. However, one wonders if it will survive in the electronic age when the target audience might not be too technology-inclined.