The e-book is here to stay

The launch of Apple’s iPad in the USA on Saturday April 3 is an historic date in the progress of books towards a digital format. While the Amazon Kindle has a head start and already offers more than 460.000 ebooks, the iPad has caught the public imagination. Apple’s ability to produce innovative designs goes back over many years – from the Mac, to iPods to iPhones – and the iPad is expected to sell more than 3 million units in its first year. Already 300.000 were sold on the launch day.

Private enterprise will make the new product more desirable by offering thousands of apps to enable the iPad to perform a huge range of functions. No less than one million apps were downloaded on the release date.

The new iBook store will be to books what iTunes is to music. No less than 250.000 ebooks were downloaded on April 3. Christian publishing has not been slow to respond. Zondervan announced that 1.000 of their titles would be made available on the same day as the iPad launch, including 150 children’s titles and 30 Spanish titles.