Which countries are most loyal to the printed book?

R.R. Bowker’s “Global eBook Monitor” study (as summarized here by the Digital Book World blog, and in the above Bowker chart) surveyed “1,000 to 2,000 people in each of ten countries—Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, India, Japan, South Korea, Spain, the UK and the U.S.” and found that Australia, India, the UK, and U.S. have the most consumers switching to electronic reading.

At the bottom of the list: France and Japan, where “66% of French and 72% of Japanese people… said they had not tried e-books and did not want to try them.” In both countries, “technology for e-reading is widespread, but the adoption is low and attitudes toward e-reading are relatively negative.”

Then again, perhaps it’s too soon to tell: Amazon’s French Kindle store opened late last year, with a relatively small selection of titles—just 35,000 French-language books.