The NY Times has a general ebook roundup and I found the following snippet of interest that ties in with the Mike Shatzkin article below:
But even with widespread access to e-books, publishers have not yet figured out how to sell them more effectively to consumers. Debut fiction and so-called midlist titles — books that are not large commercial successes — are particularly tough sells in digital form, said Peter Hildick-Smith, president of the Codex Group, a book market research company.
“You can have all the availability in the world, but if people don’t know the book exists, it doesn’t matter,” Mr. Hildick-Smith said.
A look at the Kindle best-seller list on Amazon shows that it is typically stocked with titles that are also on the print best-seller list — this week, for instance, new novels by John Grisham, Tom Clancy, Patricia Cornwell and David Baldacci. Early next year The New York Times will begin publishing e-book best-seller lists in its book review section.
“We’ve certainly learned the technology of creating e-books and distributing them,” said Laurence J. Kirshbaum, a literary agent. “But the marketing side is still the Wild West. There’s a lot of digital availability now, but we still haven’t turned the key and opened the lock on how to sell e-books.”
