20 Percent of Americans Say They’re Reading eBooks

One in five Americans say they’ve read an e-book in the last year, according to a new poll from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. Those numbers come from a late-January survey, and they’re up sharply from a December 2011 survey. Pew says the jump coincides with a rise in e-reading hardware: Ownership of dedicated e-reader devices like the Kindle and the Nook went from 10 percent in December to 19 percent in January, and ownership of tablets like iPads and Kindle Fires made the same leap.