eReaders are obviously among the highest trending products and the most desired presents. At least this can be confirmed after a brief look at the printed and online media, which promote eReaders like crazy. For example you may read the following article in NY TIMES : Great Holiday Expectations for E-Readers. Look at the following quote:
“And many of them will be bought for other people. Research from Simba Information, which provides data and advice to publishers, has shown that 1 in 5 of those who own a Kindle, Amazon’s dedicated e-reader, received it as a gift.
In a recent Consumer Reports poll, 10 percent of the adults surveyed said they planned to give an e-reader as a gift this year, up from 4 percent in 2009.
That has corresponded with an increase in e-book sales. Two years ago, publishers said that sales of e-books constituted 1 percent of total book sales, but the figure is now closer to 9 or 10 percent.”
And this is only one article! And there are so much more that I found. It’s clear that the time of the eReader finally came. I’m very happy with this, because I really like the idea of eReaders and because I’m profoundly content with my Sony Reader.
But if that cannot convince you how good idea is to buy fancy eReader for your friends or relatives, I have one more good news. Until now, the main problem in front of eReaders were the lack of enough digital books. As you can see from the following news, one more obstacle was removed with a deal between Google and the biggest French publisher “Hachette Livre”. If this deal is finalized as expected, this will unleash the power of digital books. Why? Because for the moment, eBooks are limited to mainly old US books and also, the newest additions of Amazon and other publishers. But the big part of printed books were out of reach. With this decision and with the ones that will follow (hopefully) Google will scan thousands of books that will later be available to everyone for free or not. How about that, huh?
Google Reaches Deal With France’s Biggest Publisher
France’s largest publisher has agreed to an arrangement that’ll allow Google Books to scan many of its out-of-print works.
“Under the agreement, which will be finalized in the coming months, Hachette Livre can dictate which out-of-print books it wants Google to scan and the price at which they are sold. Google is then free to sell the electronic book under the condition that it shares the revenues with Hachette Livre, a unit of Lagardere SCA.”
The arrangement is supposed to involve thousands of books, too, not just a handful for which Hachette has no use. source
P.S. There is no need to mention that after that deal, Google will have enormous advantage in this business. Do we like it? I don’t. But it’s some kind of progress. And that we must respect.
Kindle Nook or Sony 