From the Daily Iowan:
Authors want electronic publishing, and the University of Iowa Press is following with the trend.
UI Press Director Jim McCoy said the press has approximately 800 books in print, with around 75 percent of those books digitized. Around 5 percent of total book sales is from e-books, he said, whereas two years ago, the sales from e-books were practically nothing.
“I would say that’s a substantial jump,” he said.
The press currently offers or publishes an electronic version of almost every book it has, because it is expected in the marketplace, McCoy said.
“We distribute almost to anyone who’s in the e-book game: Barnes&Noble.com, Sony, Google, various vendors,” he said. “Creative-writing books, some short fiction and poetry, and creative nonfiction are definitely our most popular sellers, on Kindle and other e-book formats.”
…
The University of Chicago Press, the largest university press in the United States, publishes 250 print books per year, with about 80 percent of its new books also published in electronic formats.
Krista Coulson, digital publishing manager at University of Chicago Press, said almost all of its books are published in both print and electronic versions. E-book sales could make up about 8 percent of sales this year, she said, compared to 5 percent last year and just under 2 percent a few years ago.
“We’ve seen a lot of growth, just like Iowa has,” she said. “We are working on getting as many old books into e-book format as we can.”
