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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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