Kindle boosts tiny e-book market
Amazon.com via AP file
The Kindle will allow downloads of more than 90,000 book titles, blogs, magazines and newspapers. Publishers believe the Kindle has helped, if not revolutionized, the tiny e-book market.
By Hillel Italie, Associated Press
NEW YORK — More than four months after Amazon.com released the Kindle, no one is sure whether the latest e-book reader is really hot — or not. But publishers believe that the Kindle has helped, if not revolutionized, the tiny electronic market.
Amazon.com has received extensive media coverage since unveiling the Kindle on the Monday before Thanksgiving and announcing that the first run had sold out within a few hours. Amazon.com has declined to give sales figures for the Kindle — at least 2,000, judging from the number of customer reviews — but has said repeatedly that supply is not keeping up with demand, with the device often out of stock.
Publishing officials are reluctant to discuss sales figures, but say that they have seen double digit increases in e-book sales since the Kindle's release, including renewed interest in downloads on the Sony Reader. Sales for the most popular books are in the hundreds, comparable to the number for the Sony, which came out in 2006.
Full article is here:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/product...t_N.htm?csp=34
Most notable part for me was this: 'Even after tripling their reported sales, e-books are less than 1% of the $35 billion publishing business and likely to remain so'