E-books poised for 'huge surge' in 2010, says Fictionwise exec

Computerworld - Electronic book sales are expected to see a "huge surge" in 2010, partly due to the recent addition of e-book readers for iPhone and BlackBerry devices and new form factors in production, according to Fictionwise LLC's Steven Pendergrast.

Despite recent criticism that smartphone screens are too small or lack the clarity of dedicated e-book readers, electronic books are selling well to smartphone and handheld users, said Pendergrast, president and chief technology officer of Fictionwise, the e-book seller that Barnes & Noble Inc. purchased for $15.7 million earlier this month.

Fictionwise announced support for BlackBerry e-readers earlier this week but has been creating e-reader application software for various handhelds since 1997, going back to early versions of the PalmPilot PDA, Pendergrast said in an interview today. In all, the company has e-reader applications for 300 different devices, including those that run Windows Mobile, Palm, iPhone and Symbian operating systems.

"The vast majority of our customers read on smartphones or handhelds or other kinds of form factors," Pendergrast said.

Fictionwise sold 1.5 million e-books in 2008, and Pendergrast said the average sale is the same as the cost of a market-price paperback book, ranging from $8 to $15. Fictionwise has seen 50% year-to-year revenue growth each year in the past several years, and Pendergrast said he expects the same in 2009, despite the economic downturn.

While Fictionwise sells e-books primarily to users of smartphones and handhelds, its nonencrypted versions of e-books are sold to owners of dedicated e-reader devices, such as the Kindle from Amazon.com Inc. and Sony Inc.'s two e-readers, Pendergrast said. "We sell hundreds of them each week," he said.

But 2010 will see a "huge surge in e-book sales," he predicted, citing the various kinds of devices running e-readers. In addition to its recent announcements, Fictionwise expects to add more form factors and devices. For example, Pendergrast said the company is working on an e-reader that runs on smartphones using Google Inc.'s Android operating system, and a device from Plastic Logic Ltd. that's the size of a sheet of paper (8.5 by 11 in.), although not quite as thin.

While the availability of more devices that can work as e-readers is expected to improve sales, Pendergrast said there is a "tipping point" of e-book popularity that will occur in 2010, as more consumers see users reading e-books on planes and subways.

Fictionwise research also shows that the company's typical customer is a woman, between 40 and 50 years old, who tends to have a higher-than-average income and level of education. In comparison, a few years ago, the typical customer was a man, who might have been a "gadget freak," Pendergrast said.