An article in the New York Times Technology section this week reports that sales of e-books via e-reader devices are on the rise. Among others, some interesting quotes from the piece:
For a decade, consumers mostly ignored electronic book devices, which were often hard to use and offered few popular items to read. But this year ... the e-book has started to take hold.
The perception is that e-books have been around for 10 years and haven’t done anything ... But it’s happening now. This is really starting to take off.
And as we come close to the end of 2008, these quotes are significant ones. The article provides many other examples and provides a good summary of e-books across the spectrum of devices, and some sampling of sales trends. The message seems to be that e-books are coming close to jumping the adoption chasm and are on the verge of becoming more mainstream. Booksellers that are not thinking about how to sell content in an increasingly digital world may find themselves less and less the "go-to-first" option for readers.
