Electronic Book Readers Promote An Increase In Reading
A recent study by the Association of American Publishers found that e-book sales for the first six months of 2010 were up by 183% on the same period in 2009. Forrester Research predicted that 11 million Americans would own some form of digital reading device by the end of September 2010.
It appears that e-book readers are encouraging people to read more. Owners of the Amazon Kindle Reader are reported to buy 3.3 times as many books following the purchase of their Kindle than they did before they had their reader.
Right now, Amazon is the biggest seller of e-books by a country mile. They have more than 700,000 Kindle books for sale on their website – and there are a further 1.8 million out of copyright books that can be downloaded for free. Amazon has, very cleverly, made a whole range of free apps available for a variety of different devices which lets users read Kindle books without a Kindle reader. This could conceivably impact upon Kindle reader hardware sales – but Amazon are clearly happy to accept this in order to secure sales of Kindle books.
E-book reader sales really sky rocketed in 2009 – driven largely by the release of the Amazon Kindle 2.0 in February of that year. They should probably still be regarded as a niche product – but they are starting to spread beyond the early adopters. Recent price cuts, prompted by the launch of the Apple iPad which can, amongst many other things, be used to read e-books, have helped to make e-book readers more appealing to the buying public.
The Kindle became Amazon’s most gifted item ever during the festive season of 2009. At the moment it’s their top selling item – and it looks like this could continue for the foreseeable future. The third generation Kindle launch at the start of August has been a very effective counter to the iPad – and the Kindle is now flying off the shelves.
There’s little doubt that the public has grown accustomed to the idea of both e-books and e-book readers by now. At the moment it seems that there is enough room in the market for both the specialist Kindle and the iPad’s versatility. It remains to be seen whether this will continue, or if there might be a move to more versatile e-book readers when Amazon eventually develop color e-ink technology displays. However, e-books are going to be a permanent feature of the publishing landscape going forward and seem likely to make up an increasing percentage of total book sales in the near future.
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