The e-book market is still hazy at best, and the influx of e-book readers is not helping publishers and readers. To get a better sense of how many e-book readers are out there, I did a Google News search. There are close to 1500 articles from the start of this year – an indicator of the flurry of activity that the device space has seen. (In all fairness, a significant proportion of them might be from Apple and the iPad). I am amazed at how many e-book readers are already out there or are due for launch. Many gadget companies have already started looking at this space and are accordingly launching their products. I have listed a few of the e-book readers that I have come across. (Do let me know if I missed any)
The newspaper and magazine segments are the largest contributors in revenues to the global publishing industry – contributing close to 52% of global publishing revenues. It would therefore be safe to assume that of all the challenges faced by the industry, none would be as altering (in terms of revenues) as the challenges faced by these two segments. The newspaper and magazine segments have already lost considerable revenues on account of dip in ad revenues. This is directly attributable to the global economic slowdown, which has led to decrease in consumer and corporate spending.
In one of my previous posts, I had written about therise of Google in the ebook market and its implications. But are ebooks as important an offering as the publishing industry is making out to be? Will ebooks be a one fit solution for publishers? Can a publisher ultimately sustain on revenues from ebooks?
A lot has been said and written about ebooks, ebook readers and the stimulus that the publishing industry has been giving to anything and everything digital. The arrival of a technology behemoth such as Google just goes to validate that the market is in fact, worth it.
