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E-book sales in the United States could hit $100m in 2009, as people get to grips with the new version of the Amazon Kindle.
Amazon c.e.o. Jeff Bezos revealed the device to an audience in New York yesterday. Retailing at $359, it is lighter, slimmer and faster than the original Kindle. It also holds more books and has a longer battery life.
The">http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-kindle10-2009feb10,0,924255.story"... Los Angeles Times reported that the Kindle launch could lead to e-book sales of more than $100m this year. James McQuivey, an analyst with Forrester Research, said: "The fact that it's growing quickly suggests that 10 years from now, we could see digital books as the primary way books are sold, just as we talk today about digital as the primary way music is sold."
However, another analyst suggested its $359 price was still too high for it to cross over into mainstream success. Van Baker, an analyst with technology research firm Gartner Inc, said: "For the average consumer, paper still works pretty well."
Quentin">http://www.forbes.com/2009/02/08/kindle-ebooks-iphone-technology-persona... Hardy at Forbes argued that Amazon's insistence on low e-book prices could hurt publishers. The complete works of Mark Twain, for example, sells for $4.99 for reading on the Kindle. He said: "That kind of value, and the free books from Google, may hurt book publishers' bottom lines if they catch on. So-called older "backlist" titles, along with books in the public domain without copyright, like that student copy of Hamlet, are good earners for many publishers. There is not a lot of money in any one volume, but they add up well.
"Similarly, if Kindle really does eliminate the business of packaging in paper, a lot of the value in being a book publisher goes away. Writers and editors could regroup in other forms, and Amazon could be a publisher itself. (People are already selling self-published, .pdf copies of works on Amazon.)"
However, at">http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2009/tc20090210_262587... Business Week, another analyst argued that low e-book prices could cannibalise its printed book sales. Jeffrey Lindsay, analyst with New York-based Sanford C. Bernstein, said: "They don't want to antagonize the book publishers and they don't want to cannibalize their own book sales.
He estimated that the company makes around 5% to 10% higher margins on print books than it does on digital downloads to the Kindle, which run around $9.99.