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K, I know that probably 98% of you aren’t rabidly following the blogs of people on the inside of the publishing industry. So here’s the deal: the publishing industry is getting very excited about eBooks, even without Google saying they’re going to get into the eBook business.
We’ve covered the Kindle here a couple times, but I’m willing to bet most of you don’t have one. Sometimes we like to think that means that eReaders and eBooks are nonstarters. But according to new research from Forrester, that’s just not the case. In fact, as RWW says of the report:
the eBook and eReader market has now hit a point where it is ready to break out of its niche and become a mainstream phenomenon
Now this is kind of a big deal coming from Forrester, who initially pegged the Kindle as “a niche device that would only attract a small number of book-loving early adopters.” Now they’ve revised their projections:
This is the year that eReaders are supposed to make the transition to widespread acceptance—and that may already be underway. Seven months ago, Oprah’s favorite new gadget was the Kindle, and she spent quite a bit of a show extolling its features (though it’s possible her love for the Kindle has waned as her love for Twitter did).
This isn’t a format war—there will probably always be a place for paper books in our society, and that doesn’t mean that eBooks can’t have one. But this could well be a turning point—and Google is poised to catch that wave, with its eBook offering reportedly coming out by the end of this year.
What do you think? Is Google getting in on the eBook trend just in time? Or will Amazon, with its eReader and eBook hand-in-hand, continue to dominate paper and electronic book sales?
