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Forecasts that the UK's e-book market will grow to £710m by 2013 are "way off", said a senior figure at Nielsen Book, claiming sales would not climb that high for "quite some time".
Speaking at yesterday's (13th October) Tools of Change conference at the Frankfurt Book Fair, Ann Betts, commercial director for Nielsen Book, highlighted three estimates for e-book sales by 2013. The "high case" estimate was for sales reaching half of the viable e-book market—or number of titles that are available to be formatted into e-books—which is expected to be just over £1.4bn.
Betts acknowledged the rapid growth seen in the digital market in recent years, particularly in the US, citing Citigroup's estimate that 550,000 Kindles had been sold by the end of last year in America, and "various" estimates that put that at 1m this summer. However, Betts said: "I don't
see the UK market going there." She said the "high case" estimate would be "quite a challenge" given the nature of the current print book market, which would require at least 25% of all books to be converted into e-books.
In order for the market to grow to that size, she argued that 12m devices would have to be sold. "That's about one-fifth of the UK population, and this is all of the book-buying public," Betts said.
Betts suggested a number of households would be likely to share devices, as they share books. She added the current economic climate would slow the rate of growth "in the short term". She also referred to a recent study, showing that 35% of UK consumers wanted devices to be priced below £100, but the most persuasive factor was the price of e-books, which was the main concern
of almost half (46%) of respondents. "Consumers are exceptionally price sensitive at the moment, and will be for at least two years," she said.