E-Books Are Only 6% of Printed Book Sales

[HistoryWes]

The article was filled with flaws. Most of the anti-ebook articles seem to be written by those who have never held an ereader. For instance, as we all know the ebook alternative to the 99 cent used book isn't a 10.00 new book, it's a free book from Mobile Read or Feedbooks.

[Logseman]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

If they would stop marketing EVERYTHING toward the friken kids & start marketing toward us, they would be making money hand over fist! We are the ones with the most disposable income. The kids just starting out are struggling just to make ends meet.

Your generation's disposable income will collapse with retirement, thus ensuring only 10 or 12 years of income. My generation faces circa 50 or 60 more years of payments to put profit in whatever product is sold.

[jnorlund]

I agree that it will be a while before ebooks replace paper if they ever do entirely, but I see it as a problem of affordability and reach. DVD took a while to take over VHS, etc because the players themselves had to come down to a price where every household could have one and they did all the basic stuff. They K3 and the Nook will help as will the iPad. But for a real adoption wave to take place, a reader at least the level of the K3 in features needs to be below $100 normally.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

I do know, however, that CD's are 60% of music revenues, and have declined for most of the past decade. Online song downloads continue to rise.

Recorded music always required an extra device to experience. Record player, cassette deck, CD player, computer, MP3 player... people always expected to need to buy a music player, and arrange their music purchase to be compatible with that player.

Books, however, were self-contained until recently. People didn't/don't expect to buy "book reader" separate from "books." It will take much longer for the concept of "book reader" to find its way into the majority of households--and it will be contingent on book readers that are a lot more physically robust, and able to display a lot more types of content well. (Textbooks, magazines, newspapers in addition to novels.)

Originally Posted by emellaich

It appears that I'm missing something here, but why? I don't understand the need for color in e-books?

As soon as you get away from novels, color can be important. Textbooks & newspapers with color photos, science books with charts or graphs, design books with color swatches, cookbooks or instruction manuals with color-coded tags.

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Books, however, were self-contained until recently....

Sure. But while there are numerous differences between the two mediums, there are a great deal of similarities. And the reading devices are plummeting in price. I'd be surprised if $100 wifi devices weren't available within 2 years from now.

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

It will take much longer for the concept of "book reader" to find its way into the majority of households--and it will be contingent on book readers that are a lot more physically robust, and able to display a lot more types of content well.

Perhaps, but it doesn't really have to.

Paper magazines and newspaper sales are already cratering. People are fine reading content on smartphones, computers and tablets. And for people who only purchase a handful of books per year, they'll be served by paper for quite some time to come -- just more by online sales and POD than by going to a bookstore.

It will take time, and it is unlikely that physical sales will completely disappear anywhere near as rapidly as the two or three technopundits cited in the article insist. But chances are pretty good that paper sales will slowly decline, and ebook sales will slowly rise.

[Acousticvillage]

Until e-books are a fraction of the price of pbooks, and until there is more choice than simply the popular holiday-throwaway novel (just look at the dumbed-down range and type of book on sale at Amazon) there is little reason to expect the figure to be much more than 6-10%. The view of so many e-reader owners that all we should need is the text of the book to enjoy it is one reason why there is still so far to go.

Dual page readers, colour, and the option of multimedia and web-related content facilities (should people want this) are only the bare minimum of what a new generation of readers wiull need to make the transition. Finally, to charge more than, say £5 for ANY ebook, which is basically 3mb of text with none of the tactile or aesthetic benefits of the real thing, not to mention the limitations of e-books in terms of sharing, lending, quickly referencing, etc etc etc etc.......we'll not be seeing a growth above 10% for the forseeable future.

Any growth we do have will be purely down to the number of devices that can now display ebooks - combine the eraders, ipads, pc's etc. After the novelty, it will be back to the dedicated 5-6% who find eraders genuinely fine for their purposes.

[ficbot]

People who read a lot will probably move much if not all of their disposable fiction (i.e. not art book, specialty book etc.) onto e-devices of some kind (dedicated or multi-function). People who buy one book a year to read on the plane on their way to vacation will either read on a multi-function device or use a strategically placed print on demand machine. That's my prediction

[J. Strnad]

Your generation's disposable income will collapse with retirement, thus ensuring only 10 or 12 years of income. My generation faces circa 50 or 60 more years of payments to put profit in whatever product is sold.

But your generation is notoriously fickle!

In my generation we had "Ford men" vs. "Chevy lovers." You hired on at one company and stayed there until you got your gold watch and retirement package.

Now, people move from company to company and brand to brand, and often the shiny new brand has more appeal than the "old, stodgy" one. Marketing to the young generation is a matter of "What can we sell them today?" because we know that tomorrow, some other brand will be the hot gotta-have-it brand.