Article: Forecasts of an E-Book Era Were, It Seems, Premature (NY T)

[treed at clearwater-fl.com]

Interesting Article from the New York Times....First couple of paragraphs
below.  Full story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/28/technology/ebusiness/28EBOO.html

Forecasts of an E-Book Era Were, It Seems, Premature
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Last August, top executives from Microsoft, Barnesandnoble.com and several
book publishers assembled at a Midtown Manhattan hotel for a news conference
to usher in the coming age of the electronic book.
"We believe the e-book revolution will have an impact on the book industry
as great as the paperback revolution of the 60's," Jack Romanos, president
of the Simon & Schuster division of Viacom (news/quote
</redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/
nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=VIA>), told a crowd of reporters.
Laurence Kirshbaum, chairman of the books division of AOL Time Warner
(news/quote
</redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/
nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=AOL>), pledged to lead the charge: "We
want to see electronic publishing blow the covers off of books." Andersen
Consulting had recently estimated that by 2005 digital books could account
for 10 percent of all book sales.
A year later, however, the main advantage of electronic books appears to be
that they gather no dust. Almost no one is buying. Publishers and online
bookstores say only the very few best-selling electronic editions have sold
more than a thousand copies, and most sell far fewer. Only a handful have
generated enough revenue to cover the few hundred dollars it costs to
convert their texts to digital formats.