E-book use growing: More popular in U.S. than Europe at present
By Paul Biba
E-book use is on the rise, says Hi Ebook—summing up a Gartner report.
Demand for electronic books, or e-books, has created one of the fastest growing Internet consumer market segments. Research conducted recently by the Gartner Group revealed that one in 300 books read in the USA, and one in 450 books in Europe, are read in the digital format. This is a 38% increase on last year, which in turn experienced 25% growth on 2003.
eBook units sold for the first quarter 2004 were up 46% and eBook revenues were up 28% over the same quarter in 2003. These and other figures charting the eBook industry are reported in a quarterly [report from the International Digital Publishing Forum].
Related: U.S. wholesale e-book sales defy recession: $14M in Q3 2008 vs. $8M for same period in ‘07.
November 10th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
2009 — economy willing! — will be a growth year. Aside from France and England, the Sony Reader will be in Germany and The Netherlands. Probably other countries too as the months go on.
November 11th, 2008 at 1:03 am
I think Mike is dead-on. With the Kindle and Sony Reader not available in Europe, it’s not surprising that the US currently leads.
From my personal viewpoint, most of my customers are from the US, but I do get a significant number of customers from the UK, Canada, Australia, and India, with a smattering from other countries (I offer eBooks only in English, so English-speaking countries are my primary market).
Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com