The once exponentially growing market of e-books in the U.S. has slowed dramatically, according to research from RR Bowker. Good news for the print-media industries. The web site Dead Tree Edition writes: “The breathless predictions of two years ago, which suggested that the growth of e-books would soon shut down all the book printing presses and brick-and-mortar bookstores, turned out to be way off the mark”, they write.
“We went from exponential to incremental growth,” Kelly Gallagher, a Bowker vice president, is quoted as saying by Dead Tree Edition. The US e-book growth seems to have reached a plateau or a level of saturation. What’s more intriguing is that recent buyers of e-reading devices are not purchasing as many e-books as the early adopters do, according to figures from RR Bowker. One conclusion might be that they are not doing much reading on their new gizmos.
