Today was a hard day for the former world champion. Good old printed paper got three heavy upper cuts right on the chin.
Maybe it will get up to stumble a bit around but the new rising champion ebook will finish it soon for sure.
First hit: Leading E-Textbook Seller Reports 400 Percent Sales Increase in 2009
400% increase! Although this article also mentions problems like still high costs, the trend is there.
“They’re still kind of digital immigrants, the people who are in college right now,” Mr. Schmidt said. “Also, your typical e-textbook is kind of a glorified PDF of the hard copy, and students are not necessarily enamored with that.”
With more and more devices coming on the market after the Apple Tablet launch on January 27th prices will go down rapidly.
Second hit: Cambridge University Press Launches New Ebook Platform
Cambridge University is the oldest press in the world. And they launch their own ebook platform with over 6000 books. I think this speaks louder than words, right?
And number three: Amazon Fires Missile At Book Industry, Launches 70% Kindle Royalty Option
There are also rumors that Apple is planning a same option for their own rumored online bookshop, e.g. 70/30% and that this is Amazon’s reaction in advance of the Apple tablet launch next week.
The traditional publishing industry moans that cuts in ebook prices will wipe out what little margin the publishers have left, thus preventing publishers from paying authors big advances and, thus (be afraid! be afraid) result in fewer good books being published.
Hogwash.
So three heavy hits today but hold on, yesterday wasn’t a good day for paper either. According to the Wallstreet Journal Publishers are in Talks with Apple over the Tablet already. Ouch!
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