Dan “Da Vinci Code” Brown and the other usual suspects show up on the 2004 list of electronic best-sellers from the Open eBook Forum. In the past, at least, some have criticized the OeBF’s methodology as being biased in favor of large publishers.
Whatever the case, I don’t know whether to rejoice or weep–given the amount of dreck on the best-seller lists for paper books. Check out the Web site for The Da Vinci Code Hoax.
Total e-book sales: Retail revenues for Q3 of 2004 were up 25 percen, but “eBook units” increased just 11 percent compared to the same period 2003. Why the difference–are sellers charging more per unit? At any rate the unit stat is not good news. Total unit sales were 419,962 or less than what the biggest best-sellers would have individually achieved in the p-book area. With the twin demons of proprietary eBabel and cumbersome DRM, the e-book biz for the moment remains a dismal underperformer compared to the old predictions. OpenReader, anyone?
