E-Readers search for place in the market

Posted by Betsey Reinsborough on November 2, 2009 at 5:21 PM

E-Readers, such as the Kindle and the newly released Nook, are striving to find their foothold in the always capricious holiday shopping season. As an article from Wired.com explores, the gadgets are having a difficult time finding their niche in the electronics department. Since the e-readers have only one function, as opposed to those such as the iPhone- with its plethora of options, many consumers do not seem keen enough to add another electronic to their already large collections. Many also are still partial to the experience of reading physical print rather than an electronic version.

The QUE, the first proReader to be aimed at professionals, will be launched by Plastic Logic at the beginning of this coming year. Its introduction will likely boost sales of the newspaper and magazine subscriptions already available with other types of e-readers, since the screen of the QUE is nearly double the size of other e-readers specifically to mimic the page of a newspaper. It also allows for updates to the display page throughout the day as a newspaper that updates itself. However, we will have to wait until January when it is officially launched to find out which newspapers will be available on the QUE.

Many experts have weighted in on how to help the lagging market. Ross Rubin, of NPD Group, a marketing research company, suggests coming at it from a different angle by converting textbooks for use on e-readers before best sellers. However, following the failed experiment at Princeton this fall, that may not be the solution either.

Barnes and Noble reports already having more than one million books available for e-readers, and Amazon reports having 350 000 available. One company, Open Road Integrated Media, is taking it a step further by offering backlist books, with the addition of video, as well as new titles. Additionally, the Daily Beast has created Beast Books, which forgoes the waiting period altogether and publishes their books electronically as soon as they are finished. This helps them to produce books on current issues quicker than most other publishers. Perhaps this instant availability is the answer e-readers have been waiting for to increase demand.

Sources: Wired.com, New York Times