Sales of e-books jump

from http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=532230&publicationSubCategoryId=71
E-readers and e-books: The new bestsellers
By Alma Buelva (The Philippine Star) Updated December 14, 2009 12:00 AM
"The typical e-book buyer today is said to be those who also used to buy hardcovers and are primarily educated and married men in their late 40s.
Others already see e-readers as “chick magnets” which perhaps lead some market analysts to suggest that for e-books and e-readers to gain more mass appeal they should also become more attractive and price-friendly to women.
E-readers are still quite pricey at $200+. Market researchers believe it will gain mass appeal if e-readers get to the $50 price range, otherwise it won’t be as ubiquitous as MP3 players. With notebooks and smartphones offering alternative platforms for e-books, industry pundits see only about 10 million people owning e-readers by the end of 2010, or one percent of the 110 million who have MP3 players.
But with color screen e-readers in the pipeline and as the consumer electronics sector sees a bit of recovery from the recession, hopefully, the number can still go past 10 million.
Meanwhile, an e-book today sells at an average price of $8.30 versus $14.55 for a hardcover version. In the case of Amazon, e-books have a fixed price of $9.99.
The Association of American Publishers estimates that sales of e-books jumped 68.4 percent in 2008 and further increased to 177 percent to $96.6 million in August 2009.
Looking at the bigger picture, the association noted that e-books account for only 1.5 percent of the $6.8 billion books sales of 2009. However, they don’t discredit the fact that e-books’ growth rate is outpacing hardcover sales.