This just in … eBook readers out-sell books during the all-important gift-giving holiday season…
More online shoppers bought e-books on Christmas Day than traditional books for the first time ever, according to e-commerce giant Amazon.com.
The Amazon Kindle outsold all books in all categories at Amazon. Now, I prefer the Sony Reader, simply because it feels easier to use and is not locked into proprietary formats, however that is beside the point. 2010 will see other eReaders emerge, to be sure, and the eReaders will get better and better. This is like CDs emerging from a cassette tape culture. It is coming, and it will take time to adjust, and some people (including me) will hold on to their LP books forever - but the wave is building.
eBooks will be something to produce in the next year and the people in the higher pay grades will be those who can figure out how to make them profitable for the writers.
The Kindle e-book store now contains over 390,000 books, according to Amazon, although the firm faces competition from publisher Barnes & Noble, whose Nook e-book reader sold out completely through pre-orders by the end of November.
“Publishers must not lose faith in the digital opportunity despite the market cacophony; pushing for open standards and creative value-added e-reading applications should be the publishing world’s immediate course of action.”