Fuelled on a diet of romance and crime, new research claims the digital reading revolution is being powered by “prolific” readers who are predominantly female and over 45.

A study carried out for ebook retailer Kobo suggests that women represent 75% of the most active e-readers – defined as readers who spend at least 30 minutes a day using electronic books.

“They are the engine that powers the industry,” said chief executive Michael Tamblyn. “The industry has intuitively known this, but we wanted to shine a light on it.”

Around 77% of the most active readers – who make up a 10th of Kobo’s 28 million customers – are aged 45 and over, with the largest single group (30%) aged between 55 and 64. Kobo said this makes e-reading “the first technological revolution being driven by [those aged] 45 and older, rather than younger generations”.

“As one gets older there are a number of benefits in e-reading,” said Tamblyn, “it’s nice to be able to make the font larger, or not to go to the bookshop to find the next book.”

Kobo, whose report is based on data from its own customers as well as a survey of 16,000 readers using Kobo e-readers and competing devices, said that while women accounted for the largest group of active digital readers, older men also made up a significant proportion. Men aged between 18 to 34 accounted for only 13% of active digital readers, but once they were over 65, men represented 34% of the most enthusiastic readers, said the retailer.

Kobo found that the average prolific reader used print and digital formats, reading two print books a month, and buying 16 print books a year, as well as 60 ebooks. Some 16% of Kobo’s most enthusiastic customers said they bought an ebook “almost every day”. They overwhelmingly preferred to read romance novels, the retailer reported, with the category accounting for more than twice the number of unit sales as general fiction, the second most popular category. Mystery novels came in third. Prolific readers who chose romance were reading for almost 90 minutes a day, and finding time more than six times a day to settle down with a book.

“Romance tends to be a little bit shorter, and more affordable,” said Tamblyn. “It’s a place where digital has become overrepresented – it’s quite difficult for a bricks and mortar store to stock the range and selection these passionate readers want, as they can’t devote the space to it. So these customers have come much more quickly to digital.”

The report echoes conclusions from Nielsen’s 2015 UK books and consumers survey, which found that older women were relatively heavy ebook purchasers.

“In our data, in 2015, females aged 45-plus represented a quarter of the population of ebook buyers, but [account for] nearly a third of ebook purchases by volume,” said Nielsen’s UK research director Steven Bohme, “suggesting that they buy ebooks in higher numbers than average.”

Older women carried less purchasing heft in the print book market, Bohme continued, accounting for 20% by volume in 2015 – a figure influenced by parents buying books for their children. But the enthusiasm among older women for reading revealed by the Kobo survey was matched in figures on library usage.

“Older women are relatively likely to borrow (print) books from public libraries,” Bohme added, “accounting for 32% of borrowers in 2015.”

According to Kobo’s data, the most enthusiastic readers spend at least 20 hours a week reading, or around three hours daily, compared with the average reader, 40% of whom read for 10 minutes at a time.

“Reading wasn’t a frequent choice for them – those outside our good reader contingent chose reading over other forms of entertainment just 20% of the time, or perhaps once a week,” said Kobo in its analysis. “Meanwhile, our best readers chose reading over other entertainment 70% of the time.”

Kobo concluded that for some readers “binge reading is as much a part of their lifestyle as binge-watching Netflix is for others – almost two hours a day on average, with Saturday and Sunday being reading’s prime time”.

Digital reading “seems to set in at around age 20”, the report continued, arguing that it demonstrated “reading is alive and well.”