When It Comes to E-Books, England Still a Primitive Society

One of the programs presented at the London Book Fair was a panel on e-books attended by the heads of such illustrious British publishers as Random House Group, Hachette Livre UK, HarperCollins, and Penguin Group. The host, BBC News Media Correspondent Torin Douglas, asked what he called "The $64,000 question": Where’s the money in ebooks?

When it comes to digital technology the sun always seems to rise last on the British Empire. The same question was raised in the US over a decade ago and settled five years later as e-book sales began a rocket-boosted double-digit assent that has not remotely begun to level off. Indeed, January 2009 e-book sales jumped an astounding 173.6% over the same month of 2008 - while England slept.

The very title of Douglas's panel tells us what time zone the Brits occupy. "The $64,000 Question" was a television quiz show introduced over fifty years ago. Though the size of the jackpot was unprecedented in that postwar age, it is dwarfed by those paid today. Hello? We're up to "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" We're also up to more than $50 million in e-book sales annually. So, the real $64,000 question for our friends across the Pond is, What part of Money in E-Books don't you understand?

RC