eBooks Are Ready for Prime Time

Authors     Textbooks    Teen Market     Retirees

eBook sales may be “just a drop in the bucket” in today’s $22 billion traditional book market, but change is afoot. 

Best-selling authors are no longer fighting the trend, but are now selling digital rights to their works.  For how two leading authors are joining the eBook bandwagon, click here.

Publishers and booksellers are also ramping up eBook offerings while they await an eBook standard.   (For details on the fight to set eBook standards, click here.)  Initially, Barnes & Noble will use PDF to deliver its eBooks.  It plans to digitize the one million books in its warehouses over the next five years.  This would give the company options “such as packaging eBook files along with books, printing books on demand, and resurrecting out-of-print titles,” says B&N vice chairman Steve Riggio.  Meanwhile, Barnesandnoble.com announced they would offer 2,000 titles for Microsoft Reader by the end of the summer.  And, for now, Amazon.com will distribute Microsoft Reader as its preferred, but not necessarily exclusive, format.

Although only 50,000 eBook readers have been sold in the first two years of their existence, a lot more should be sold in the future—as device prices come down and as eBooks become more widespread.  Jupiter Communications predicts that there will be 6.5 million dedicated eBook devices in five years.  A more optimistic Anderson Consulting says 28 million people are likely to adopt devices for eBook reading by 2005.

Markets for eBooks could emerge in different stages.  The education market and eTextbooks, not surprisingly, could be the first to develop, according to many experts.  Beyond textbooks, the teen market is also getting close scrutiny by potential ePublishers.  And, the Baby Boomers generation, now approaching their retirement years, also has strong demographics.  Retirees may become a big eBook segment.

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