Published on MediaPost.com

Today's e-book power buyer, someone who buys an e-book at least once a week, is a 44-year-old woman who loves romance and is spending more on buying books now than in the past. She uses a dedicated e-reader like a Kindle instead of reading on her computer.

According to the Book Industry Study Group, new stats from its Consumer Attitudes Toward E-Book Reading survey show that:

• E-books currently make up around 11% of the total book market. The percentage of print book consumers who say they download e-books more than doubled between October 2010 and January 2011, from 5% to almost 13%.
  
• Women make up 66% of e-book power buyers. In 2009, they didn't even make up half of e-book customers (they were at 49% of the e-book market)
  
• Most e-books sold (58%) are fiction, with literary fiction, science fiction, and romance each comprising over 20% of all e-book purchases
  
• "Power buyers" represent about 18% of the total people buying e-books today, but they buy 61% of all e-books purchased
  
• The most influential factors leading to an e-book purchase are free samples and low prices.

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