Comments on: U.S. 2007 wholesale e-book sales: $31.7M, or 23.6 percent over 2006—but should they have been still higher?

By: 2007 E-book Sales Up 23.6 Percent « Leader’s Digest

2007 E-book Sales Up 23.6 Percent « Leader’s Digest — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 20:15:42 +0000

[...] VP of Innovation, reports “seeing quite a few Kindles and Readers at the airport.” (U.S. 2007 wholesale e-book sales: $31.7M, or 23.6 percent over 2006—but should they have been stil…, TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home, Feb. 18, 2008 via Stephen’s Lighthouse, Feb. 18, [...]

By: Hadrien

Hadrien — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 15:07:54 +0000

Currently we have around 100.000 downloads (books+RSS) a month on Feedbooks.

By: Ficbot

Ficbot — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 19:27:55 +0000

Well, Manybooks.net is showing more than 11,000 downloads this week alone, so if we count the freebies, I suspect the market is quite healthy indeed.

By: john

john — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 17:57:26 +0000

31.7M shows that ebook sales are improving as compared to 2006 and with kindle getting much publicity, I think that figure will rise.

By: Al

Al — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 16:58:39 +0000

With all the free literature out on the web, I don’t think dollars is a good measure of quantity of e-books being read. Perhaps if they removed the DRM it might come closer, but it still lacks many of the books I have read for example. Do we know the number of documents that Project Gutenberg has delivered, via their site or others that offer their documents like FeedBooks.com for example? I have read 20 e-books already this year and none of them will show up in dollar figures.

By: kerry

kerry — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 15:53:37 +0000

I suspect that the initial release of the Sony device didn’t bump up the ebook sales much because most of the people buying it were already ebook buyers, they simply switched their business to a different device/store. I know my ebook buying habits haven’t changed much in the last 9 years, but I moved platforms from Palm (eReader) to Sony last year.
The Kindle, in theory, appealed more to new ebook users than the Sony due to its increased visibility on the Amazon site. I still suspect that most of the early adopters were already ebook users interested in trying out a new platform.