E-book readers, such as the Amazon Kindle 3 for example, just seem to get more and more popular. The Kindle is the market leader, by some way, but there are other offerings available – such as Barnes and Noble’s Nook. The Apple iPad, although not strictly an e-book reader, is also used by many for reading e-books.
Kindle sales are predicted to be in the region of 8 million for 2011 and, even although the Kindle 3 only launched in August of 2010, many business analysts are predicting that the Kindle 4 will be available in 2011 – complete, if the analysts are right, with color screen.
One of the obvious consequences of the increase in popularity of e-book readers is that sales of e-books also increase. Amazon recently announced that they are selling more Kindle books than they are hardbacks or paperbacks. E-book sales in January 2011 are more than double the figure for the same period in 2010. It seems almost inevitable that e-books will account for an ever increasing percentage of all book sales. The prediction for 2011 is that somewhere between 12 and 15% of books sold will be e-books.