So, how many of you out there got Kindles for Christmas? A new YouGov
survey [PDF] (admittedly of only 2,012 people, and carried out online, which might positively skew the results) says that one in every 40 adults was given an ereader, and "of the 1.33 million e-readers gifted at Christmas, 92% were Kindles".

Those are pretty impressive numbers – although, as ever when it comes to ereading, they pale in the light of the figures coming out of the US, where Amazon.com says it sold "well over" one million Kindles a week in December.

The popularity of ereaders this Christmas, though, gives publishers a second bite of the virtual cherry when it comes to festive sales, with all the newly-kitted-out readers keen to purchase new titles for their new gadget. I asked a few publishers what their sales were like on Christmas day, and the results were pretty staggering. HarperCollins had ebook downloads of over 100,000 on the 25th, "a record high and an increase of over 600% on the daily average during the previous month", it said, with its bestselling ebook George RR Martin's A Game of Thrones.

The UK's biggest publishing group Hachette also had a "blockbuster Christmas" for ebooks. "December was a very good month anyway, following a strong year. We then saw a huge jump on Christmas day, with an increase in sales of over 400%, and over 100,000 ebooks sold in the UK alone on that one day, with many more in international markets," said head of digital George Walkley, with bestselling titles including Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs, Sarah Winman's When God Was a Rabbit, and Michael Connelly's The Fifth Witness.

And that magic "more than 100,000" figure came up again at the Random House Group, where there was a threefold increase in ebook downloads compared with Christmas day 2010. Hannah Telfer, director of digital
marketing, said the most popular authors there were Lee Child, Julian Barnes, James Corden, Caitlin Moran, James Patterson and S J Watson, and also noted a 173% increase in book-related apps downloaded, headed by its Dr Who app.

So tell me, Christmas ereader recipients, who you are and what you downloaded. I don't think I can have contributed much to any ebook bestseller lists: I went old-school, and downloaded It for a reread: scary, brilliant, and the perfect antidote to Christmas cheer.