If you’ve been following my personal blog, you may have noticed that I recently spent some time in the UK. As always when travelling, I also kept an eye out for e-readers spotted both in the wild and in shops.
Shops: E-readers are prominently visible in British chain bookstores. W.H. Smith is still pushing Kobo readers, while Waterstones has partnered with Amazon and is now selling Kindles in its stores. In fact, I first saw a Kindle Fire, Kindle Paperwhite or any of the other non-standard Kindles in the flesh in a Waterstones store in Norwich. I didn’t see any Nooks, because I didn’t go into John Lewis to check them out.
As for e-readers in the wild, there are more than there were two or even one year ago, but the majority of people on planes and in airport waiting areas still read print books or magazines. I did see quite a lot of tablets around. As for dedicated e-readers, I saw a young Asian man with a Kindle on the flight from Bremen to Amsterdam, I saw an e-reader on a tray at the security check at Amsterdam Schiphol airport as well as a German couple using unidentified e-readers (maybe I should have asked them). Nonetheless, print books and mags still vastly outnumbered e-readers.
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