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Amazon To Offer Adobe E-Book Reader


By Tischelle George
InformationWeek
April 10, 2001 03:31 PM

Amazon.com Inc., the online retailer that began selling books and then expanded its selection to include everything from CDs to bird feeders, is going back to the future by focusing on its book operations and expanding its E-book offerings through a partnership with publishing software giant Adobe Systems Inc.

Amazon, which until Tuesday offered E-book titles that could only be read using Microsoft's Reader software, is now offering an alternative downloadable reader from Adobe and has made up to 4,000 titles available. By giving consumers a choice in the format used to download E-books and by adding titles to its selection, Amazon is poised to boost E-book sales, which are growing at a moderate rate, says Jeff Blackburn, general manager of worldwide digital at Amazon. "To increase sales, we need to increase selection," Blackburn says. "Sales correlate with the number of selections. As we grow the number of titles, sales will go up."

Amazon plans to leverage Adobe's relationships with publishing companies and its widely used PDF format to enhance the adoption of E-books. As part of its agreement with Adobe, within the next 12 months Amazon plans to open E-book sites in its online stores in Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom. Those sites will offer titles that can be read using Adobe's Acrobat E-book Reader, Blackburn says. The Adobe reader is available now in the U.S. store.

E-books still have a long way to go before gaining wide acceptance among consumers, and market researchers give conflicting predictions about the future of E-book sales. Forrester Research predicts E-book sales will catapult from $34 million in revenue in 2000 to $7.8 billion by 2004, while Jupiter Media Metrix forecasts sales of E-books generating $70 million this year, and growing to just $830 million in 2005.

Enabling E-books to be downloaded to wireless handheld devices is one method publishing software companies are working on to drive adoption of E-books. Adobe released on Tuesday a beta version of its Acrobat Reader, which can be used on any wireless device using the Palm operating system to read PDF files or unencrypted Adobe PDF E-books. "We don't see a separate E-book reader taking off," says Linda White, senior VP of marketing at Adobe E-books. "People want to read books on devices that they already carry around, like PDAs or smart phones."


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