E-books, the Homesteading the New Frontier

The light at the end of the tunnel has been announced quite a number of times, but with e-books sales up substantially—anywhere from seventeen to twenty-four percent, depending on you listen to—and with surveys indicating they are likely to tap a market resistant to buying conventional books—young men with the disposable income to buy the gadgets to display them—it looks like the marketing machine of Amazon may finally have pushed the concept to the tip-over point for a broader market. One of Publisher's Weekly's commentators commented that "sci-fi" readers, authors, and Cory Doctorow were leaders in the trend. Now, aided by a push from Oprah Winfrey, it looks like the concept of e-downloads driving real book sales is also gathering steam. This is a good thing and a bad thing. Good, because more readers and wider distribution are always welcome; bad, because Amazon and Oprah already hold tremendous power in the marketplace. One hardly would want to see it more concentrated.