[neilmarr]

Hya K-Thorn, my own wee house ten years ago decided to use PoD for paperbacks and online marketing and promotion -- it was all we could afford -- and has always run ebook versions, starting with PDF and then producing them also in ePub and Mobi.

My point is that, in the past, the huge majority of our readers must have had internet access and are to some extent technology-wise.

What we've experienced in 2010 is a complete shift. Sales always ran ran around 90% treebook 10% ebook until then. Over the course of the past year, those figures reversed and we've seen in the past three or so months around 90% ebook sales against just 10% paperback.

It strongly suggests to me that readers who've been in the habit of buying their paperback and hardback reading online have made an amazingly sudden turn in favour of ebooks and electronic reading devices.

That ebooks still hold a relatively small part of the overall reader-choice in presentation of the written word must, I think, largely reflect the continued attraction of local brick-and-mortar stores. But, of course, those are closing by the day, we've seen whole chains go down and/or reduce books to an also-ran as they begin to stock a whole ranger of other goods.

Although I am a huge fan of ebooks and am sure their market share will go up and up as reading devices continue to gain popularity through general exposure, I think that the weakening grip of brick-and-mortar bookshops, the ever-growing use of home computers and online shopping, combined with an often grudging and slow but undeniable shifting emphasis on the part of publishers, will greatly contribute to what is already a glowing future for digital delivery of the word.

Cheers. Neil