It is no exaggeration to say that the widespread acceptance of digital devices and a simultaneous contraction of shelf-space in stores qualify as a historic shift. The demise of Borders, the country's second-largest book chain as recently as a year ago, was largely offset by the sale of millions of e-readers and electronic books on a vast scale in a market now dominated by Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, and Google. In May, Amazon announced that it was selling more ebooks than print books. On "Black Friday," November 25, Amazon said it had sold four times as many Kindles in a single day as it did in 2010. At this rate, it seems increasingly likely that ebooks will match printed books in the next few years, and eventually overtake them.
The popularity of multi-use tablets – Apple's iPads, the Kindle Fire (which has drawn criticism for a variety of technical glitches), B&N's Nook, and several others – has been another dominant feature of the year, serving up thousands of apps for games, music, magazines, and news sites, depending on your choice of device and price. As measured by IHS iSuppli research, and reported in the New York Times, Apple will ship about 18.6 million iPads in this quarter; the Kindle Fire, which went on sale in November, will sell about four million devices; and the Nook tablet will ship 1.3 million. While tablets have scores of uses, ebooks have so far held their own as defining attractions in the digital era. Their role is reminiscent of the way DVDs transformed the movie business in the 1990s, posing a major challenge for theaters while expanding the market for players to be used at home.
Bookstores have finally recognized the enormous potential of ebooks and the threat they pose to bookstores’ future share of the market. Hundreds of independent stores, with the strong backing of the American Booksellers Association, have signed on to a Google-supported system for ebook sales and now need to persuade customers that they can serve them digital products as well as Amazon, Apple, and the other industry leaders. The ABA said that members’ website sales were up 60% over last year, and that business overall was noticeably stronger.
For digital book world (@DigiBookWorld), Jeremy Greenfield (@JDGsaid) wrote the article, “Five Big Stories of 2011 That Will Bleed Into 2012.” He advises readers to watch the following in the coming months:
· As bookstores are closing, the issue of how new books will be discovered by consumers will continue to grow in urgency.
· The new standard in ebook production, EPUB 3 and its inability to “play” with Amazon’s KF8.
· The rise of the Kindle Fire and the role it will play in driving ebook sales, as well as its effect on other tablet sales.
· The opportunity for US publishers to expand into foreign language ebook sales on the international market.
· The “agency pricing model” for ebooks and the corresponding investigation of that model by the US Dept. of Justice.
paidContent (@paidContent) has an entire series reviewing the Highlights of 2011, including "The Year in Book Publishing, By the Numbers" by Laura Hazard Owen (@laurahazardowen).
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