Part of the article talks about eBook penetration, and the difficulties with paperbacks as competition. Most readers here will
get the eBook advantages, i.e.:
- Don't have to run to the store to buy the thing (virtually instant purchasing, gratification, at least with a wireless Kindle)
- Cheaper/Sooner - Don't have to wait 2 years to buy the book in a cheaper format like paperback
- Wider selection
- Don't have to troll through half-price used bookstores (although that can be fun in it's own right)
- Much easier/lighter to carry multiple books
Whether or not eBook readers actually go above 2 million sales per year, well that remains to be seen. Sad to say, readership, just in general, is down. People are attracted to other formats, media. eBook readers probably won't ever have the penetration of say TVs (unless you maybe count cell phone variants, but I question if cell phone screens are up to anything but casual reading, granted they're fine for news headlines, etc.) But that said, when the real eBook readers get still cheaper, and have color, and bigger screens, then it is likely that we'll see considerably more sales. I was an early adopter of CD players (ironically, on their way out now, price of progress), but I remember people telling me how much better records (ironically, some are still telling me that) and tapes were, how the selection of CDs wasn't good, they'd never come to dominate, and so forth. But my guess is that once the price and performance come into line, the formats standardize a bit, back-end stores get still better, shopping engines include eBook results, etc., then there will be considerably more eBook reader sales, even then the 2 million number.