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Smart phones put e-book within reach of Kindle-less
By Peter Svensson |
September 20, 2009, Sunday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
A few weeks ago, Pasquale Castaldo was waiting at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport for a delayed flight, when a man sitting across from him pulled out a Kindle book-reading device.
Castaldo didn't have a Kindle, but he did have a BlackBerry.
He pulled it out and looked for available applications.
He found an e-reading program, downloaded it, and, within a minute, was reading Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice."
As others are also discovering, the 54-year-old Connecticut banker found e-books quite accessible without a Kindle.
"The BlackBerry is always with me," Castaldo said.
"Rather than just sitting there, if I can fill that time by reading a good book, I might do that, in addition to doing the other things I might do, like reading email and Twittering."
Thanks to the Kindle, e-book sales are finally booming, after more than a decade in the doldrums.
But the pioneering device may not dominate the market for long. As Castaldo found, many phones are now sophisticated enough, and have good enough screens, to be used as e-book reading devices.
E-book sales reported to the Association of American Publishers have been rising sharply since the beginning of 2008, just after the release of the Kindle.
Sales tripled
It's the best sustained growth the industry has seen since the International Digital Publishing Forum began tracking sales in 2002 -- a sign that e-books finally could be about to break into the mainstream.
United States trade e-book sales in the April-June period this year more than tripled from the amount a year ago, as reported by about a dozen publishers.
While other digital media like CDs, DVDs and MP3 songs showed sharp growth rates from the start, e-books have puttered around as a tiny fraction of overall book sales for more than a decade.
In several periods, sales actually declined from year to year as publishers wavered in their commitment and interest.
Shanna Vaughn, a university worker in Orange County, California, has been reading e-books on computer for at least 10 years, but it was only an occasional habit until she got an iPhone last year.
Because she can buy and download books to the phone, she doesn't need to plan a trip to the book store.
Castaldo didn't have a Kindle, but he did have a BlackBerry.
He pulled it out and looked for available applications.
He found an e-reading program, downloaded it, and, within a minute, was reading Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice."
As others are also discovering, the 54-year-old Connecticut banker found e-books quite accessible without a Kindle.
"The BlackBerry is always with me," Castaldo said.
"Rather than just sitting there, if I can fill that time by reading a good book, I might do that, in addition to doing the other things I might do, like reading email and Twittering."
Thanks to the Kindle, e-book sales are finally booming, after more than a decade in the doldrums.
But the pioneering device may not dominate the market for long. As Castaldo found, many phones are now sophisticated enough, and have good enough screens, to be used as e-book reading devices.
E-book sales reported to the Association of American Publishers have been rising sharply since the beginning of 2008, just after the release of the Kindle.
Sales tripled
It's the best sustained growth the industry has seen since the International Digital Publishing Forum began tracking sales in 2002 -- a sign that e-books finally could be about to break into the mainstream.
United States trade e-book sales in the April-June period this year more than tripled from the amount a year ago, as reported by about a dozen publishers.
While other digital media like CDs, DVDs and MP3 songs showed sharp growth rates from the start, e-books have puttered around as a tiny fraction of overall book sales for more than a decade.
In several periods, sales actually declined from year to year as publishers wavered in their commitment and interest.
Shanna Vaughn, a university worker in Orange County, California, has been reading e-books on computer for at least 10 years, but it was only an occasional habit until she got an iPhone last year.
Because she can buy and download books to the phone, she doesn't need to plan a trip to the book store.
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