by P.D. Lesko with reporting by Diane Calabrese

The new E-book readers are proving tough to sell, and E-books are proving even tougher to produce. In 2000, leading E-book reader production company Gemstar-TV Guide International sold only 60,000 units, each priced between $300 and $700 dollars. Susan Kevorkian, a publishing industry analyst, pre- dicts that E-book device sales worldwide will only hit 1.7 million by 2004, a sales figure which is considered by publishing industry experts to be low. In addition, the number of companies attempting to offer E-book text and devices is declining. Poor sales of E-book reader devices has little to do with the poor sales of E-books, however. Sales of E-books are expected to generate just $70 million in revenue during 2002.

According to an article recently published in Information Week, "In a February 2002 presentation at the [Jupiter Research media forum] publishing execs gathered in New York and made it clear that the market for E-books is a nascent one that doesn't figure to mature any time soon....Larry Kirshbaum, chairman of Time Warner Trade Publishing, told attendees that the industry has underestimated the technical challenges involved and that even converting a digital file into an E-book format has proved more complex than anticipated."

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