eBooks … By the Numbers : eBooks By the Numbers

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The estimated number of illegal book downloads in 2011. With the surge of the e-book industry comes a nefarious side effect: piracy. Illegal downloads have doubled in the past year, despite publishers' attempts to combat the trend. Internet book purchasing makes it almost impossible for publishers to pinpoint who is stealing what. The problem has become so severe that, in 2011, the Publishers Association in the UK issued 115,000 threats to websites it believed to be infringing. Many publishers are turning to search engines such as Google to filter search options for sites that provide access to illegal downloads. Richard Mollet of the Publishers Association told NewsCore, "Search engines are the gateway to piracy. That's why we are working with the government to try to encourage search engines to do more to reduce the prominence of these infringing sites."

Source: NewsCore (myfoxla.com)

70%

The increase of Nook e-reader and tablet sales Barnes & Noble saw this holiday season compared to the same period last year, exceeding the company's expectations. Emboldened, Barnes & Noble (B&N) is considering spinning off the Nook into a separate company. William Lynch, B&N's CEO, also is considering expanding the brand overseas to compete with Amazon's Kindle. Though the company keeps its lips sealed when asked for hard Nook sales numbers (not unlike its rival, Amazon), it has reported that it expects content sales for Nook devices—which are up 11 percent—to be worth $750 million by the year's end.

Source: The Verge (theverge.com)

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