Simba Information

Apple Announces New iPad and iBookstore
January 29, 2010

On Wednesday, Jan. 27, Apple finally confirmed escalating rumors of its impending tablet, with Steve Jobs' announcement of the company's new iPad—which many describe as looking and functioning like a big iPhone—with a 9.7-inch, LED backlit, color touch-screen and WiFi, and an option for 3G via AT&T.

Can Infobase Successfully Usher the World Almanac Into the Digital Age? President Mark McDonnell discusses purchasing the iconic brand at a challenging time for reference publishers.
October 2, 2009

It's well-known that reference books generally have been suffering lately, another facet of the industry that has been affected by the Internet and consumers' easy access to free information. "For 2009, revenue-wise, … we estimated reference book sales would fall much [more] than that of the other categories we expected to do poorly this year …," says Michael Norris, senior analyst at Simba Information, a market research and consulting firm in Stamford, Conn. "The simple reason is that consumers have a different relationship with reference-book content than they do with, say, a great work of fiction or an engaging biography. They mostly just need a snippet of information here and there, and being that the Web houses a lot of what a consumer thinks he or she needs, few are bothering to buy traditional reference books."

Inside the Hispanic Book Market
October 1, 2009

While the Hispanic population in the United States is expected to expand to nearly 50 million by 2010, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, current purchasing patterns indicate that this 16 percent of the nation may not buy books at the same rate as the remaining 84 percent.

Are We on the Verge of an E-book Explosion?
October 1, 2009

"The market for digital books … has been roughly doubling every 18 months,” says Andrew Savikas, O’Reilly Media’s vice president of digital initiatives. “Follow that line out, and in less than a decade it’s 64 times the size it is now.”

Minding the Store
September 1, 2009

If the Internet has taught traditional media anything, it’s that valuable content should be protected or it will quickly lose its worth. Letting music, news articles or whatever fall into the hands of those who do not value it has been toppling old media companies left and right, and is likely to continue. Take newspapers: Had their stories not been copied, pasted, snarked upon and uprooted far from their original sources (and the advertisers), there wouldn’t be nearly as many journalists in the unemployment line today.

Bowker Publishes Report on Consumer Book- and E-book-Buying Behavior
July 31, 2009

U.S. ISBN agency Bowker has announced the publication of a new report providing insights into who is buying books and what motivates them to buy. "2008 U.S. Book Consumer Demographics and Buying Behaviors Annual Report" is based on data from Bowker's PubTrack Consumer and includes book data, demographics, psychographics, genre-category breakdowns and distribution channel analysis, according to Bowker. The report also includes first-quarter 2009 trends, documenting that mass-merchandisers picked up market share while bookstores had the largest decline.*

'Giving It Away': When Free E-books Work and When They Don't
June 5, 2009

More U.S. adults had read an e-book (15 percent) than had actually paid for an e-book this year, according to Michael Norris, senior analyst at Simba Information, based on the results of a recent Simba study called, "Trade E-book Publishing 2009."

'The Dog Ate My Homework' Just Doesn’t Fly Anymore
June 1, 2009

Who hasn’t tried the excuse, “My dog ate my homework,” on a teacher? Success with that excuse now is nearly impossible, according to experts in educational book publishing. So much of what teachers currently do involves digital materials and tools that, short of a network failure or computer glitch, a student would be hard-pressed to come up with a similar excuse.

Fast Stats
June 1, 2009

10.5 million Number of sheets of paper that were used last year in Princeton University campus clusters—equivalent to 100,000 reams of paper, or about 5,000 trees. Princeton cited this figure on its Web site when explaining why it is participating in the Kindle DX E-reader Pilot Program this fall. The university hopes that students’ use of the Kindle DX will reduce their desire to print or photocopy without hindering their ability to learn.