E-Book Fans Keep Format in Spotlight; New York Times, 10/21/09

Brad Stone, New York Times; E-Book Fans Keep Format in Spotlight:

"The publishing industry has been under a dark cloud recently.

Sales are down this year, despite prominent books by Dan Brown and Edward M. Kennedy. Wal-Mart and Amazon are locked in a war for e-commerce dominance, creating new worries among publishers and authors about dwindling profits.

But amid the gloom, some sellers and owners of electronic reading devices are making the case that people are reading more because of e-books.

Amazon for example, says that people with Kindles now buy 3.1 times as many books as they did before owning the device. That factor is up from 2.7 in December 2008. So a reader who had previously bought eight books from Amazon would now purchase, on average, 24.8 books, a rise from 21.6 books.

“You are going to see very significant industry growth rates as a result of the convenience of this kind of reading,” said Jeffrey P. Bezos, chief executive of Amazon."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/technology/21books.html?scp=1&sq=e-books&st=cse

Writers want EU to follow US on Google books deal; New Europe, 9/6/09

New Europe; Writers want EU to follow US on Google books deal:

"European writers should follow the US lead and set up a Books Rights Registry in order to profit from the Internet and the rapidly-growing market for electronic books, an American best-selling author said. James Gleick, best known for his books explaining the intricacies of Chaos Theory, said such a registry would help protect their copyright and could even turn their out-of-print tomes into money- makers. “Authors in Europe need to ensure their rights are protected and that any money is shared out among them,” said Gleick, who is also a board member of the Authors Guild and Association of American Publishers."

http://www.neurope.eu/articles/95967.php