Photo: stevegarfield / Flickr

In one of the best analyses I’ve read in a long while, ‘reading later’ service Read It Later has analysed when its users read their content relative to when the content is made available online. The result is a fascinating example of how statistics and intelligent analysis make for compelling online content.

The newspaper at the couch affect

Using a combination of charts, and analysis, the service shows that we’re being bombarded by content all day long, and therefore consume content most all day, but a growing percentage of users are differing their content for reading later consumption to environments where they’re more comfortable reading in.

In short, mobile devices are making us come full circle from the time we read where we were most comfortable – your favourite couch or coffee shop – to consuming content at our desks online during office hours, to back to consuming content in our most comfortable places. It’s quite remarkable, actually.

So what are the findings?

Read it Later concludes that mobile devices are fundamentally changing where we read our content, saying ‘When a reader is given a choice about how to consume their content, a major shift in behavior occurs. They no longer consume the majority of their content during the day, on their computer,’ with readers instead shifting ‘content to prime time and onto a device better suited for consumption.’

The site says that ‘It’s the iPad leading the jailbreak from consuming content in our desks’, before saying that as superior reading devices emerge, so too will this movement gather momentum and continue to grow.

Are you like this?

Anecdotally, if you own a tablet PC or an equivalent mobile device, do you see yourself differing content for later consumption? Or are your reading habits mostly unchanged?

Photo: Stock.Xchng

A recent Nielsen Norman Group study has found that using e-readers results in reduced reading speed, while the absolute volume of content you read increases.

Micro-study

The micro-study, which had a small sample group of 24 self-professed avid readers read a bunch of books spanning multiple reading platforms. The study found that those who read e-readers can read as much as 11 per cent more slowly than when they read from the good old ink-on-paper format.

More specifically, using paper books as the reference point, it was found that those reading on an iPad read 6.25 per cent slower and those reading from the Amazon Kindle e-readers read, on average, 11 per cent slower. This could be down to time lost waiting for the page to refresh once you’ve turned them, or, less complicated, the nuances of reading on a digital platform versus a static paper one.

Bitesized consumption

What the study does not account for is how e-readers have changed how people read and how much they read. With a breast pocket-sized device that can store your entire library, it’s far more likely you’ll do reading in between commutes or during special ‘breaks’, and so on. This results in significantly more reading done in the long run. And there is no measure of the difference textbooks in eBook readers will do for the back health of a span of college students no longer carrying heavy satchels in the decades to come. If you’ve been there, you know what we mean.

The benefit of this finding

Photo: Amazon

Though this is obviously a bad thing for the speed readers among us, this could have great bearing for academic reading. That is, assuming reading the same material slower – on one device than a regular book – results in you taking in and retaining information better than by even a smidgen. If that is the case, eBook readers may be a worthwhile investment.

Being marketed to go

Dedicated eBooks readers are also becoming increasingly more affordable. Whether it is iPad response time, or just market pressure, we’ve seen Amazon Kindle, the Barnes & Noble Nook and the Sony Daily Edition drop in price over the last few weeks. It’s the slow crawl towards what some have called the ‘paperback ebook readers’, devices that have zero added features but are priced to go, so as to get as many people as possible using them.

Not that we think you would bother to do statistical research, but have you found you read slower on your e-reader than you do a regular old book? And do you read more now that you do have an eBooks reader? Let us know in the comments below.