According to Nick Ingelbrecht, research director at Gartner, "the evidence from our research is that print and online are not generally regarded as direct substitutes by consumers."

"Something more complicated than a straightforward substitution of print to digital media is taking place," he added.

Some of Gartner's findings may come as a surprise to marketers, if not to consumers. "Trying to sell the same basic content to the same consumer in different formats risks alienating the consumer, who will balk at paying twice for the same thing," said Mr Ingelbrecht.

While people are on average spending roughly equal amounts of time reading papers and screens, the experiences aren't interchangeable. A big majority - 94% - of tablet (including iPad) users reported that screen reading was either easier or about the same as reading print. But 80% of notebook users thought paper was easier to read or about the same as electronic text.

Demographics come into it: men tended to find screen reading easier than women did, and 40-54 year olds were the least satisfied with screen reading. Yet urban Chinese respondents were the most familiar with eBook readers, and were more inclined to report that they were easier to read.

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What's needed, the analyst firm concludes, is a multi-channel strategy, and one that reflects the strengths of the different platforms. Another issue raised was the importance to consumers of being able to transfer books and other purchased digital content to new devices. Cloud-based storage was suggested as a mechanism that might overcome that problem.

The survey was carried out in 4Q10, and involved online, face to face and phone interviews with 1569 consumers in the US, UK, China, Japan, Italy and India.