Survey Shows Steady Growth in E-book Sales

Although the notion of e-book sales is often lampooned as an oxymoron, a survey conducted by the Open e-Book Forum, an e-publishing trade association, reveals a nascent industry boasting double-digit sales growth and an even greater increase in the number of consumers downloading e-book readers.

The survey of Open e-Book forum members paints a portrait of steady and often vigorous growth in consumer awareness, e-publisher marketing savvy and, most importantly, e-book sales. The OeBF concedes that the figures are growing out of a small base (and many OeBF members declined to provide specific dollar revenue figures), but the survey suggests that an industry that essentially didn't exist 10 years ago is slowly building a market for electronic reading.

According to the survey, revenues at Random House doubled year-over-year in 2001 and, during the latest quarter ending in March, revenues were the highest ever. PerfectBound, the HarperCollins e-book imprint, reports selling more e-books in the first five months of 2002 than in all of 2001. Simon & Schuster reports double-digit gains in e-book sales from the first half of 2001 to the first half of 2002. McGraw-Hill Professional e-book sales are claimed to be up 55% over the same period last year. Palm Digital Media, which offers e-books from major publishers in a format that can be read on Palm OS handhelds, reports that 180,000 e-books were downloaded in its format in 2001, an increase of more than 40% from 2000.

Nicholas Bogaty, executive director of the OeBF, told PW that figures are very preliminary and OeBF needs to create a more precise format for collecting, analyzing and reporting data on electronic books. "The initial hype that surrounded the early days of e-books has overshadowed the steady growth," Bogaty said. He emphasized that the survey was a response to "critical articles about e-books that don't have numbers to support claims that e-books are not selling. We wanted to address this misconception." Bogaty said, "We just asked our membership for any information about their e-book programs. We know we need to standardize our reporting in the future." Bogaty pointed to the increase in sales "as the most important information. Two years in a row, our members have reported a doubling of sales."

The survey also found that downloads of the Adobe Acrobat e-book reader have increased by 70% this year over last and more than five million copies of Microsoft Reader have been distributed. Random House trade imprints now publish lead titles as print books and e-books simultaneously. And e-wholesaler OverDrive reports about 450 publishers offering a commercial e-book list.

The OeBF (www.openebook.org) is a trade association of e-publishers and e-vendors organized to create digital standards and promote electronic reading.