In early July 2010, the bookseller Borders launched its own branded e-book store. They offer 1.5 million titles available in a variety of digital formats including ePub and PDF. According to their CEO Mike Edwards, their plan is to offer device-neutral formats and capture a significant portion of the e-book market within a year. The fact is that Borders is a bit late launching their e-book store because Amazon launched their own e-book store along with the Kindle e-reader in 2007. Barnes & Noble launched their own e-book store and partnered with Sony for e-readers.
At the end of July Amazon announced that Stieg Larsons e-book “the girl with the Dragon tattoo” became the first of Amazon’s e-books to sell 1 million copies. Several other authors are also closing in on the million book mark for Amazon. Remember though that these numbers are only from Amazon. Other booksellers such as Barnes & Noble and Borders also sell e-books. And long before these book retailers began selling e-books there was Project Gutenberg. Today Project Gutenberg offers more than 33,000 free e-books in the public domain. They currently average about 100,000 e-book downloads per day. Many e-books currently being sold by the various popular booksellers are also available at Project Gutenberg for free. It’s worth a few minutes of your time to check out Project Gutenberg at www.Gutenberg.org .
Also in July 2010, online bookseller Amazon.com reported sales of e-books for its proprietary Kindle outnumbered sales of hardcover books for the first time ever during the second quarter of 2010. At that time it sold 140 e-books for every 100 hardcover books. By July this number had increased to 180 Kindle e-books per 100 hardcover books. Paperback book sales are still much larger than either hardcovers or e-books. The American Publishing Association estimates that e-books make up about 8.5% of book sales as of mid-2010.
Related posts:
If you're not sure what a QR code is, read my article here
{ 2 comments }
Being a little less than techno-savvy, I was a little surprised when I got a Nook e-book for my birthday. Now downloading books is fast, easy and cheaper than the paper version. Recently I finished Book One in a trilogy. I was so excited about the plot line that 5 minutes later I was reading Book Two after downloading it while never leaving the couch. I think this technology makes information ever more available. Count me as an avid e-reader!
Good for you BJ. I find e-books and e-readers fascinating. This is the first of 3 posts on e-readers and e-books. There are more on the way. I haven’t yet gotten an e-reader yet but I think it’s only a matter of time.
Comments on this entry are closed.