Ebooks: winners in the generation game

Ebook consumption among older age groups continues to grow. Photograph: dbphots/Alamy/Alamy

The growth of e-reading among older age groups shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise.

By Anna Baddeley

New technology, like pop music or radical politics, is something you’re expected to lose touch with as you get older. This idea is encouraged by the young, who would rather their elders gracefully embraced luddism than try to befriend them on Facebook. What’s refreshing about e-reading is that it’s not just popular with traditional early adopters; their parents are getting in on the act too.

According to market researcher Bowker, while younger people’s ebook consumption is plateauing, in older age groups it continues to grow: more than a quarter of 45- to 55-year-olds and a fifth of over-55s bought an ebook in the six months to March 2012, up from 17% and 15% last November. A OnePoll survey last year found the over-55s were more likely to own an e-reader than 18- to 24-year-olds.

We shouldn’t be too surprised: older people tend to be heavier book-buyers and baby-boomers keen technophiles. But e-readers have qualities that could make them indispensable to an ageing population.

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Book critics to get their own prize for reviews

Inaugural ‘hatchet job of the year’ prize announces shortlist in order to boost profile of professional criticism.

The Guardian is represented in the shortlist by classicist Mary Beard and her review of Robert Hughes’s book Rome. Photograph: Eamonn Mccabe

By Mark Brown

From Thomas Macaulay observing of Socrates: “The more I read … the less I wonder that they poisoned him,” to Edith Sitwell on DH Lawrence – “very dirty” – there has been a noble history of writers getting it in the neck from critics. But now the critics may get a prize for their harsh words.

The shortlist was announced on Tuesday for the inaugural Hatchet Job of the Year award, a celebration of “angry, funny and trenchant” book reviews which the organisers hope will “promote integrity and wit” in literary journalism. Anna Baddeley, editor of The Omnivore website which is behind the prize, said one aim was to boost the profile of professional arts criticism. “We think it is at risk from the growth of book bloggers and Amazon reviews,” she said.

The website was set up by Baddeley and her friend Fleur Macdonald when they left university three years ago. “It makes no money at all,” she said. “It is a labour of love.” It aggregates press reviews of books, films and plays and has a database of more than 10,000.

It means they have to read a lot of reviews and Baddeley said they had concluded that many were just not as good as they should be. “We do get annoyed as we read hundreds of book reviews a week. So many of them are really boring and a lot are just plot summaries with just a couple of sentences of cliched opinion tucked at the end.”

Hence the decision to celebrate “artful demolitions”, although Baddeley stressed it was meant to be fun and they were careful not to include scathing reviews of debut writers.

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