Another step for eBooks

E-book sales make up about 1%of the $25 billion US book publishing market. It is significantly lower across the rest of the globe. The 25% annual growth rate will probably increase significantly as a result of this move however.

One has to wonder why Amazon's share price increased by $1 on the same day that the B&N eBooks announcement was made. Was it simply that Amazon's E-Book strategy had been galvanized finally by B&N's move?



Yesterday Barnes & Noble announced that they have expanded their eBook store to 700,000 titles, Amazon has 300,000. 500,000 of these are free public domain books. Barnes & Noble's eBooks are compatible with the iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows and Mac. Amazon's eBooks are only compatible with Kindle.


When looking at the total number of books available globally, this is still just a glimmer of light compared to the total number of books published each year (UNESCO monitors both the number and type of books published per country per year). There are roughly 1,2 million book titles published each year. In order to reach the intended audience, each publication requires a surplus that will never be read.

An argument for E-Books
A large percentage of all paper books that are published are returned to the publisher. It's estimated that 2.8 million trees are cut down for books that nobody reads. This may be an exaggeration on the author's part but, let's face it, we are a race of skilled wasters. At least 5 million acres of forests are consumed by the paper industry in the Southern US. These figures are hard to find; During the period 1990–2005 deforestation took place place at a pace of about 13 million hectares (an area the size of Greece) per year globally. The forestry industry probably employs about 12 million people globally. It is a massive industry, worth much more than the book publishing and music industries together. It would be too hazardous to guess the global value of the industry today but employment in forestry declined globally by about 10% from 1990 to 2000 due to increased mechanisation. We therefore have an industry where a million people are losing their jobs every year and small countries worth of foliage are disappearing. Please let this be clear, E-Books is not the solution to global warming. eBooks will likely not make a material difference to the amount of paper produced in the next year. The point, however, is that the wheels are in motion and that electronic communication is not heading for the rocks.

The effects of the Internet on our lives
Studies have shown both the good and bad effects that online has on our lives. Interestingly, however, studies have shown that in terms of time displacement, television viewing is the most displaced medium (Kayany and Yelsma (2000) examined the effect of online media on other household
media and on family communication). In terms of information use, the Internet is increasingly displacing other forms of media.