Electronic books in the USA – their numbers and development and a comparison to Germany
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/07378830710735939 |
| Pages | 157-164 |
| Date | 13 March 2007 |
| Published date | 13 March 2007 |
| Author | Peter Just |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Electronic books in the USA –
their numbers and development
and a comparison to Germany
Peter Just
Directmedia Publishing, Berlin, Germany
Abstract
Purpose – While there are frequently quoted articles about the revenue in e-books over the last two
years there is no regular statistical information about the amount of e-books being published. This
article attempts to fill this gap.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper states the total number of commercially available
English-speaking e-books in the US-market and reviews the growth of the publishing-activities over
the last 20 years. Finally, the paper sets the growth of the publishing activities in the e-book-market in
relation to the developments in the hardcover-market. The data about the English-speaking
publications was obtained from the book trade directory Global Books In Print Online. The data about
the German-speaking publications was gathered from the author’s own survey.
Findings – There are at least 115,000 commercial English-speaking e-book-editions offered in the
US-market. There is an increase of an average of 20 per cent a year in the production of e-books over
the last 20 years. In relation to the total amount of hardcover-editions the total number of e-book-titles
run up to 9 per cent. In comparison to Germany the USA is at the forefront of the e-book-market. About
5,000 German-speaking e-book-titles were published, which runs up to 1 per cent of the total amount of
hardcover editions.
Originality/value – The low number of e-books published is one of the central problems of the
e-book-market. As there is no other data available yet this article provides the reader with the
information needed to assess the situation.
Keywords Electronic books,Electronic media, United States of America,Germany
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Asking for the reasons of the slow development of the e-book market Rogers in Library
Journal states “[f]irst and foremost is lack of adequate content” (Rogers, 2006). In a user
survey recently published by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) one of
three main suggestions made was that “[t]he selection of eBooks available should be
improved” (IDPF, 2006).
The low supply of titles is widely identified as one major problem of the end user
e-book market. Nevertheless there is little data published to quantify this problem,
except for a highly-quoted article by the IDPF, which estimates that the number of
titles published was to rise by 20 per cent over 2004 (International Digital Publishing
Forum, 2005) This article will provide more data to specify the problem of low
e-book-supply. First the total number of commercially available English-speaking
e-books in the US-market is stated. Then the growth of the title supply over the last 20
years is reviewed. Third the growth of the publishing-activities in the e-book-market is
set in relation to the developments in the hardcover-market. Finally these numbers of
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
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Electronic books
in the USA
157
Received 17 May 2006
Revised 18 October 2006
Accepted 1 November 2006
Library Hi Tech
Vol. 25 No. 1, 2007
pp. 157-164
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0737-8831
DOI 10.1108/07378830710735939
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