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Scarcity of Titles Slowing E-Book Progress?
11/2/99
It's a chicken-or-the-egg situation: Are there few e-book users because there are few titles available electronically, or are there few electronic titles because the number of e-book users is so small? Either way, electronic books still haven't caught on.
An analysis released at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the largest book event in the world, indicated that electronic books will not show much impact on the book publishing and selling industry before 2003 at the earliest. That's despite the fact that prices of various e-book reading devices continue to drop.
New technology from Microsoft that enhances the appearance and readability of pages on e-book monitors may help encourage more consumers to try an e-book, but the real stumbling block may be the lack of book titles in electronic formats. eBookConnections.com surveyed 40 publishers engaged in electronic publishing and found that the number of electronic titles is rather small.
The 21 publishers who responded to the survey have produced just 3,311 titles in formats compatible with e-book readers. The titles are overwhelmingly fiction and include some new books published strictly in digital format as well as electronic reprints of books currently in print and out of print.
Two publishers expect to release more than 30 titles electronically on average per month and a third anticipates releasing 15 to 20 titles each month, but the rest either intend to produce no more than six titles in electronic formats on a monthly basis or have no specific publishing schedule.
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