By Keith Regan E-Commerce Times
09/05/01 6:53 PM PT
By most accounts, e-books need help finding their way to the mainstream,
because as yet, consumers have only been mildly curious.
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Looking to meet the much-anticipated
consumer demand for electronic
books, leading portal Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) joined with
four publishing houses Wednesday to launch an
e-book site
on its shopping network.
Yahoo! said the deals with Simon & Schuster, Penguin Putnam,
Random House and HarperCollins give it one of the
largest collections of e-books in one place
and make it one of the first e-tailers to offer e-book
titles from multiple publishers.
The site launched with more than 1,000 books available,
Yahoo! said, including bestsellers by Stephen King
and Joyce Carol Oates.
The books require either Adobe's
Acrobat eBook Reader or the Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Reader,
which are both available free at the site.
Future is Wide Open
Despite widespread skepticism from many consumers and
slow overall adoption of the e-book format, Yahoo!
said the future for e-books is bright. Yahoo! Shopping vice president and general manager
Rob Solomon said that Yahoo! anticipates an increasing demand for e-books.
According to Solomon, because Yahoo! is offering a "broad collection of the most
sought after titles in multiple e-book formats," it is well-positioned to
meet demands today and into the future.
Simon & Schuster president and chief operating officer Jack Romanos added that because
Yahoo's shopping site reaches millions of consumers, the partnership represents
"an important step toward the mainstream" for e-books.
Swimming for the Mainstream
The public has embraced e-books in spotty -- if occasionally intense -- fashion. Early
experiments, such as Stephen King's pay-as-you-go e-book serial, "Riding the Bullet"
stirred such intense consumer interest that several
e-book sites crashed under the weight of the traffic.
Analysts say the best days still lie ahead for electronic books, which require consumers
to purchase readers or download software to enable them to read the books.
Late last year, IDC predicted that while just US$9 million was spent on e-books
in 2000, that figure will likely grow to $414 million by 2004.
The National Book Foundation recently said it would
consider e-books
for the prestigious National Book Awards for the first time.
Not Waiting
Despite the slow adoption, several e-commerce firms
have already unveiled e-book offerings.
Earlier this year, Barnesandnoble.com (Nasdaq: BNBN) moved to create its own e-book
publishing division, saying it would pay higher
royalties to authors and allow writers to reach readers directly.
I'm glad to see that my favorite portal has jumped into the eBook business. However, why just ...
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