eBooks Show Life
April 10, 2004
Remember when everyone thought eBooks would be the next big thing? The apex of the hype was the fall of 2000 when there were two e-book conferences in New York one week apart. At the same moment speakers were trumpeting the advent of a billion dollar market, someone at the other end of the hall was already calling in the sell orders to their broker.
Here we are more than three years later, and there is, in fact, en eBook market. It is smaller than hyped of course, but it has proven to be some nice incremental revenue for some of the trade publishers. The Open eBook Forum (OeB) reported that retailers enjoyed $2.59M in eBook revenue for the quarter ended September 30, 2003 (their latest public numbers), an increase of 37% over the same quarter the year before. Not billions clearly, but modestly good numbers that are trending in the right direction.
I also like the latest news from OeB, their decision to produce a monthly eBook Bestseller List. The first published list is notable for how much it looks like any other bestseller list, and also where it differs. Thus we have books such as The Da Vinci Code (#1, go figure!) and Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies, which came in at #8. However, you also have books that don't often appear on general bestseller lists, such as Peter Hamilton's space opera, Pandora's Star, at #3.
More significant to the list are the refererence books—a bible, a dictionary, and a thesaurus. We all know bibles to be perennial good sellers, but so too are staple reference works such as dictionaries. Everyone has to have a dictionary in their home, and I like the idea that many people apply the same rule to their computers and PDAs. There is room in these devices for other reference materials as well.
Posted by Bill Trippe at April 10, 2004 6:13 PM
