The New E-READER? - electronic book publishing - Brief Article

Chief Executive, The, Feb, 2001 by Cheryl Comeau-Kirschner

EBOOKS ARE LIKELY to be an e-failure. Forrester Research forecasts slow growth for both eBooks and eBook reader devices, while it anticipates strong sales for custom-printed trade books and digitized textbooks.

In fact, digital delivery of custom-printed books, textbooks, and e-books will add up to 17.5 percent or $7.8 billion of publishing industry revenues. From this amount, only $251 million will come from eBooks or eBook devices.

"Publishers are expecting trade eBook sales that won't materialize--the drawbacks of wading onscreen will discourage all but the most motivated readers," says Forrester senior analyst Daniel O'Brien. "But publishers can't go back to business as usual. The Web's distribution advantages demand that they shift to far more flexible digital production."

Forrester also predicts that the pressure for publishers to offer greater consumer choice will result in a new business model called "multichannel publishing." Multichannel publishers will develop current business practices to match the Internet's speed and convenience.

To achieve success in the multichannel approach, Forrester analysts believe that publishers' editors and authors' agents should negotiate by incorporating online research, communities of interest, Net promotion plans, and product variants.