E-books to take publishing industry by storm

The electronic book market is poised for rapid growth and will capture ten per cent of the global publishing market by 2005.

Research by Andersen Consulting predicts that sales of e-books - which will mainly be downloaded onto handheld reader devices - will total $2.3bn worldwide by 2005, a significant proportion of the $21.9bn industry.

But, Jack Gold, analyst at Meta Group, said the figures are optimistic. He told silicon.com: "The market for electronic books will remain relatively small as reading from a small handheld device can be cumbersome. The publishing market is experiencing the new technology hype with money being invested in a high-risk area."

Alexander Broich, UK MD at online book retailer bol.com, said e-book technology will be an important development.

He said: "Business publications in particular will be interested in the electronic book format as it allows just sections of books to be read by users. Palmtops and other handheld devices are still relatively expensive but the increased demand for online text will bring the prices come down."

The potential of the market has not gone unnoticed by several heavyweight traditional publishers, which are launching e-book ventures.

US media giant AOL/Time Warner last week invested in bookface.com, a US Web site which publishes books online several publishers, including HarperCollins and Penguin, have signed up to provide content.

In addition, Adobe has joined PricewaterhouseCoopers and InterTrust are developing eBook publishing products using its PDF-based Acrobat Reader technology.