The market for both e-books and e-book readers really took off in a big way in 2009. E-book readers have been available for 10 years now (the Franklin eBookman launched in 1999). In 2006 Sony launched their PRS reader and the original Amazon Kindle launched in November of 2007.

However, it wasn’t until Amazon launched the updated Kindle 2.0 in February of 2009 that e-book readers really went mainstream. Amazon followed up with the large format Kindle DX in the summer of 2009. By the year-end, Sony has unveiled no less than three new PRS readers and the Nook reader from Barnes and Noble had launched.

The Kindle quickly became Amazon’s number one selling product and, over the festive season of 2009, became the “most gifted” Amazon product ever. In the meantime, what e-book readers were launched, even Apple entered the market with the unveiling of the new iPad - potential customers had plenty of options to choose from.

The market had developed, and was continuing to develop, at a very rapid rate. Although the public has very quickly become accustomed to the idea of e-book readers, it seems as if the publishing houses were struggling a little with the concept. Many of the large publishing houses were unhappy that cheap e-book editions were being made available at the same time as newly released hardback editions.

A conventional publishing cycle generally sees the release of the hardback edition followed some months later by the paperback version - this is now to be supplemented by the insertion of the e-book version at the beginning of the process. There’s no reason to delay the release of this - and it would be inadvisable anyway, after all, e-book reader owners are likely to be avid readers and are therefore in the target demographic for new book releases. It goes without saying, but customers will not be prepared to pay the same type of price for an e-book version that they would for hardback or paperback edition. And why would they? There’s no paper, ink or bindings involved and the delivery charge for a downloadable e-book is a fraction of a fraction of the cost to deliver a physical book.

E-books have been the cause of some fairly tense negotiations between the big publishing houses and book sellers. Amazon’s strategy of setting e-book prices at $ 9.99 or less even resulted in McMillan books being briefly withdrawn from Amazon’s website. As stated previously, the owners of e-book readers will be amongst publishing houses best customers. Unless the big publishers adopt and adapt to the new technology and learn to use it to their advantage, they will lose out, lose customers and eventually become extinct.

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