The E-Book Revolution: LucasBooks and Random House/Del Rey Missing a Major Revenue Stream

We know that LucasFilm and Del Rey (an imprint of Random House) are working on getting the Star Wars library of Expanded Universe books published in digital format as e-books.  This is one area where the Star Wars franchise is behind the curve.  Of course as with Blu-Ray, Star Wars isn't always a franchise that caters to early adopters.

Some interesting numbers are being reported regarding the rapid, and I mean rapid growth of e-books and e-book reading devices this year.

As evidence, he pointed to numbers from Codex Forrester and Gartner Research: 30% of all readers consume both ebooks and print books to some degree. For 2011, the company predicts 18 million ereaders will be sold -- compared with just 900,000 sold in 2009 -- and 35% of readers will own come to own one. As for actual book sales, the Association of American Publishers reported ebooks in the U.S. brought in $70 million last January, a 116% increase from the same month last year, while adult paperback sales fell from$104.2 million to $83.6 million during the same period. ~ CNN MONEY

E–book sales triple from last year and beat out print books...
The sales of e–books reached $90 million and tripled the number from last year, according to the Association of American Publishers...
Although paper format sales still exceed e–book sales, it surpassed any single print format for hardcover, trade paperback or mass market paperback books. ~EXAMINER.COM

E-book sales totaled $90.3 million in February, up 202% compared to the same month a year earlier, according to a study from the Association of American Publishers. That put e-books at No. 1 "among all categories of trade publishing" that month -- the first time e-books have beaten out traditional publishing formats.~CNN MONEY

As a book collector, I love the print format.  There is nothing like the feel of a book, it far surpasses reading on an electronic device.  But cost, space, and time factors make e-books a much better and easier option for many readers.  This is a gigantic market for Lucasfilm and Del Rey to tap into.  Hopefully they will do it sooner rather then later.

SOURCES: CNN Money #1 , CNN Money #2, and Examiner.com