eReading Survey Findings and Research: A Look behind the Numbers

Sarah Weinman is the News Editor for Publishers Marketplace and Publishers Lunch. Previously she was the publishing industry reporter for DailyFinance, and also writes a monthly crime fiction column for the Los Angeles Times and a monthly cultural Q&A for Currency, the American Express-owned personal finance site. She has contributed to many print and online publications including the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, Maclean’s, the Daily Beast, and the National Post, and she has appeared regularly on New Hampshire Public Radio’s “Word of Mouth” and Minnesota Public Radio’s “Midmorning.” She lives in New York.

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Matthew Bernius’ research focuses on studying how different media tools alter the way groups communicate, and, in turn, how those changes affect the evolution of said tools. In addition to his role as a co-director and researcher at the Open Publishing Lab (OPL) at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Matthew is pursuing an Anthropology PhD at Cornell University, where he is researching the transformation of text based journalism within the United States. Prior starting his PhD, Matthew was a visiting professor at RIT’s School of Print Media where he taught Database Publishing, Variable Data Print, and Web Development. He completed a Masters in the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago. Matthew started his career at Eastman Kodak where he worked in the consumer digital camera group and at Kodak.com. During his time at Kodak, Matthew was involved with web and product development, community management, and content strategy and earned one patent. In addition to his work with the OPL, he is member of RIT’s Lab for Social Computing, a cross disciplinary center focusing on the use of computing tools to facilitate these social and collaborative interactions.

You can view his personal blog at www.waking-dream.com and follow his twitter postings at www.twitter.com/mattBernius.

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Kelly Gallagher serves as VP of Publishing Services at RR Bowker. In this role he manages the implementation of a host of Bowker business intelligence services, including the PubTrack consumer research panel reaching over 40,000 ‘e’ and ‘p’ book consumers. For the past year, he has been leading a team of researchers on a three-year initiative for the BISG to study consumer attitudes toward e-devices and digital content. This long-term trended study looks at consumers purchases on a quarterly basis as it seeks to understand the rate and shift to digital content. In addition to managing the consumer research panel, he oversees sales data collection and analytics tools for the higher education and religious book markets for Bowker. Beyond his role at Bowker, Kelly serves the book publishing industry as the Research Chair for the Book Industry Study Group.

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Peter Hildick-Smith is President of Codex-Group, a pioneer in digital book audience research, founded in 2004. The firm tracks and forecasts digital book trends for the publishing industry, and its digital pre-publication market testing Book Identity and Author Equity programs help publishers boost new book discovery and purchase conversion rates, develop author audiences, and increase new book sales.

New York Times bestsellers that have benefited from Codex digital market pre-test programs include—Have a Little Faith by Mitch Albom (Hyperion) NYT #1, Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe (Hyperion) NYT #2, Mighty Queens of Freeville (Hyperion) NYT #16, Ten Roads to Riches by Ken Fisher (Wiley) NYT #8. Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown) NYT #1, The Song is You by Arthur Philips (Random House) NYT #31, Bonk by Mary Roach (Norton) NYT #10, Final Warning by James Patterson (Little, Brown) NYT #1, Rules of Deception by Chris Reich (Doubleday) NYT #3.

Prior to founding Codex, Hildick-Smith was SVP, Customer Management for GE Capital Global Consumer Finance, North America, serving retail clients including Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Exxon/Mobil, Gap, and JC Penney, and before that was Chief Marketing Officer for GE Capital Consumer Finance UK. At Bertelsmann’s Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, he served as VP, Merchandising, as well as VP, Marketing for the Young Readers, School, College and Library markets. He chairs the Wharton Media & Entertainment Network in New York, is a research advisor to the National Endowment for the Arts, and has an MBA in Marketing from The Wharton School (1981), and a BA in Comparative Literature from the University of Pennsylvania (1976).

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Jennifer Manning works as a Manager of Client Service at The Nielsen Company, where she helps clients understand how to leverage the growing popularity of mobile phones, smartphone apps, tablets, and eReaders. The Nielsen research she draws upon in advising clients includes Nielsen’s New Connected Devices Playbook, which surveys more than 5,000 consumers who already own a tablet computer, eReader, netbook, media player or smartphone – including 400 iPad owners.

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