Book People Archive

Wired News article on eBooks



E-Books Live On After Mighty Fall
By M.J. Rose
2:00 a.m. Dec. 18, 2001 PST

In the last few months, several e-book-only imprints have closed up shop.

First, AtRandom (Random House), then iPublish (AOL Time Warner) and 
last week MightyWords (BN.com-majority shareholder) bit the dust.

But that doesn't mean e-books are a lost cause. In fact, e-book 
reading and sales are stronger than ever.

In the past year, 1,600 titles were downloaded more than 3.1 million 
times at the Etext Library at the University of Virginia. That's 
8,715 free e-books per day.

Meanwhile, independent publishers and retailers such as 
Fictionwise.com, Booklocker.com, Hardshell Word Factory and Palm 
Digital Corp reported sales increases in 2001 from between 100 and 
400 percent over 2000.

<snip>

rest of article is at
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,49184,00.html
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