21:40
aaronchua
The first obvious thing is that there are more searches now on ebooks. This is not surprising given the proliferation of devices like Kindle and the iPhone that enable mobile reading.
What surprises me is the next chart that ranks the regional interest in ebooks. Unexpectedly, the countries with the highest interest all came from Southeast Asia. I had initially thought that US and Europe would have stronger interest but the data has shown me otherwise.
As I dig deeper, most of the interest in ebooks were coming from the desire to find free ebooks. This is not unexpected given that most of the countries in this part of the world desire free stuff. However, it also signals that there is a demand for ebooks in this region. It is just that nobody has figured out the right business model for it. That is a huge opportunity.
My next step was to explore the demand for ebooks on different devices and whether that demand is evenly distributed across the world. I first look at kindle ebooks and found that most of the interest came from US and Europe. Asia, on the other hand, doesn't seem to have strong demand for ebooks on Kindle.
I then look at the demand for ebooks on iPhone. Surprise, surprise. The regions with the most interest comes from Asia, not US or Europe. The top 5 for example are mostly countries in Southeast Asia. This caught me off guard as I didn't think there was such strong interest here. This also gives me comfort as I am currently developing a service that attempts to do for authors what TopSpinMedia is doing for musicians, but on the iPhone platform.
These are just rough findings but they have taught me something new. What I want to find out next are the categories of ebooks that are most read. If there is any information you want to share, do leave them in the comments.Thanks for reading!
Posted in: Personal
