Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Very high percentage growth is perhaps symptomatic of the fact that the market is currently very immature - it's easy to double your sales when you're starting from a small figure; much harder to do so in a more mature marketplace.
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of course that's true, but the fact that there is a healthy growth is encouraging because it means the ebooks are gaining penetration, which will eventually lead to more publishers taking them seriously and making them available, which in turn will lead to more market penetration since more of the titles people want to read will be available... if this year isn't the tipping point for ebooks then at the very least i think it's not far off.
for example, ebook sales in france are probably still negligeable, but this is primarily because very few titles are available as ebooks (every time i search for a specific book i want, it's not available, for instance). but little by little more titles are appearing (the fnac now advertises over 3000 titles ; since they only launched their ebookstore last autumn with the release of the sony 505, that's a decent start i think although it still leaves a lot to be desired), and as more people buy the ones which *are* available, hopefully more publishers will see that and produce their own... i think it's very much an ouroborous phenomenon.