I worried I might be over-optimistic with a three-percent figure. Maybe. If so, however, I might have some company in Steve Pendergrast, co-owner of Fictionwise/eBooks.com.
"I’m not sure how many iphone+ipod touch there are out there right this second," he just wrote. "If there are five or six million, say, then 3% of that is something like 150-180k people reading. That’s pretty close to the download figures after just one month post-appstore-launch. So, yeah, a few months down the road it should be way past 3% even if only a third of the people who try it out become regular readers." Follow the link for more of his thoughts.
Now imagine hundreds of millions of iPhones and other e-book capable phones sold over the years, including the Android variety. This is why, in the end, sales linked to mobile phone cells could dwarf those associated with dedicated devices. And remember, mobile phones come with communications built in. Why should this wireless thing—and the related ease of use—be just for Amazon?
I’ll welcome further comment from other members of the TeleBlog community, including, of course, other bookstore owners.
Related: Fictionwise on why it isn’t selling current bestsellers in ePub format, from MobileRead. Sure enough, the DRM issue is among the complications. High time for publishers to listen to Fictionwise’s skepticism toward DRM!
The more I use my iPod touch to read books, the more and more I think about selling my Sony Reader. The convenience of being able to wirelessly download books and the backlight are two major positives for me.
Although I fully recognize the potention of the iPhone/iPod as a ereading platform (I can safely say this since I just got my iPhone 3G), please keep in mind that many people – including myself – are now in the process of exploring the App store and the iPhone’s capabilities; downloading eReader and Stanza just to have a look at it (it helps that these apps are free of charge) could be part of this process.
After downloading the ebook apps and some (free) ebooks, the odds are that these people just like the gimmick and keep them installed, just to show it to friends (“look what I can do with my new iPhone!”), but never actually use the ereading functionality in daily life.
So, the amazing number of downloads since the introduction of the App store is certainly very positive for the ebook industry, but it could be that after this initial surge, only 10 or 20 percent of the downloaders actually turn into enthousiast ebook readers.