It’s too early to tell, however, whether the Kindle has directly spurred sales of e-books. Reliable numbers on e-book sales are difficult to come by, but the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) estimates that the wholesale market for e-books in the United States approached $32 million in 2007, based on figures reported by 12-15 trade publishers—which Michael Smith, IDPF executive director, says comprise an estimated 75-percent to 80-percent of the trade publishing market. In 2002, when the IDPF began collecting statistics on e-book wholesale revenues, the figure was approximately $5.7 million. That’s a growth trajectory of more than 500 percent over five years.
Laura Dawson is CEO of Numerical Gurus, LLC, consulting company providing services to the information, librarym and book industries. Dawson has consulted to numerous organizations in these verticals, primarily focusing on solving problems related to metadata, identifiers, Linked Data, semantic web applications, and structured content.