This could be good news for Apple's iBookstore: a recent Pew Internet Research Center survey found that the percentage of Americans aged 16 and older who read an e-book grew from 16% in 2011 to 23% in 2012.

Readers of traditional books dropped from 72% to 67%. Overall, those reading books of any kind dropped from 78% to 75%. eBook device owners jumped from 18% to 33%. Awareness that libraries offer digital texts grew from 24 percent to 31 percent.

The telephone survey of 2,252 people aged 16 and older was conducted from Oct. 15 to Nov. 10. It has a sampling error margin of plus or minus 2.3 percentage points.