E-book titles on the decline?

Colin Dunstan · 08-30-2005, 05:20 AM

Just when we had hoped to celebrate the success of e-books this year, we are confronted by David's dismal discovery that the number of e-book titles published actually has declined by 39% in 2004:

Quote:

I ran across the numbers tucked away in the just-mentioned Arizona article in the Book Standard, and similar numbers appear in Inside Higher Ed News, which says: "the 23 publishers that responded to a survey made $9.62 million in revenues in 2004, a 31 percent increase over 2003, even while they chose to publish 4,351 titles, down from 7,138 in 2003."

rlauzon · 08-30-2005, 05:48 AM

eBooks in closed, proprietary formats with invasive DRM are unacceptable, yet that seems to be the only way that they will release new eBooks. No wonder sales are dropping.

I wonder what the numbers would have been if they had included Project Gutenberg, Blackmask Online and Fictionwise numbers.

davidrothman · 08-30-2005, 08:42 AM

I couldn't agree more with your comments about the nonDRMed books in nonproprietary formats! A big question exists as to how representative the stats are of the industry as a whole, the reason the TeleBlog post included a question mark in in the headline. I'm just glad that both MobileRead and the TeleBlog are around to get at the truth. Why did it take so long for these stats from the Open eBook Forum (now the International Digital Publishing Forum) to become public? One detail: No, sales didn't drop, just the number of titles from the publishers surveyed. Either way, however, that's not the best news for e-books, which were supposed to encourage more diversity in titles. - David Rothman, for TeleRead.org

cbarnett · 08-30-2005, 09:37 AM

I'd love to see Baen's sales statistics for the last couple of years, and see how a company that specifically deals in non-DRM ebooks is doing. I bet it would make very interesting reading, and put fears like this to rest...

Craig.

08-30-2005, 08:42 AM	#3
davidrothman Connoisseur Posts: 60 Karma: 32 Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Alexandria, VA Device: Paperwhite, $50 Fire, iPad Air 2, Nexus 6, Kobo Aura H2O	I couldn't agree more with your comments about the nonDRMed books in nonproprietary formats! A big question exists as to how representative the stats are of the industry as a whole, the reason the TeleBlog post included a question mark in in the headline. I'm just glad that both MobileRead and the TeleBlog are around to get at the truth. Why did it take so long for these stats from the Open eBook Forum (now the International Digital Publishing Forum) to become public? One detail: No, sales didn't drop, just the number of titles from the publishers surveyed. Either way, however, that's not the best news for e-books, which were supposed to encourage more diversity in titles. - David Rothman, for TeleRead.org Last edited by davidrothman; 08-30-2005 at 08:46 AM.

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08-30-2005, 05:48 AM	#2
rlauzon Wizard Posts: 1,018 Karma: 67827 Join Date: Jan 2005 Device: PocketBook Era	eBooks in closed, proprietary formats with invasive DRM are unacceptable, yet that seems to be the only way that they will release new eBooks. No wonder sales are dropping. I wonder what the numbers would have been if they had included Project Gutenberg, Blackmask Online and Fictionwise numbers.

08-30-2005, 09:37 AM	#4
cbarnett MR prodigal son Posts: 1,085 Karma: 1083739 Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Australia Device: Kobo Aura H2O	I'd love to see Baen's sales statistics for the last couple of years, and see how a company that specifically deals in non-DRM ebooks is doing. I bet it would make very interesting reading, and put fears like this to rest... Craig.

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