Back in May 2010, the bookseller Waterstone's announced it had sold 700,000 e-books and 60,000 e-book readers since September 2008. In July 2010, US Amazon reported that sales of e-books were outstripping sales of hardback books and was predicting that sales of e-books would outstrip sales of paperbacks by the end of 2011.
This week, the publisher Pearson (the home of Penguin and the Financial Times) announced a better than expected financial performance - helped by an increased demand for e-books.
Pearson states that Penguin will continue to ‘lead the industry in innovation in digital publishing'. Penguin has seen a three-fold increase in sales of e-books and is intending to increase the number of available titles significantly before the end of the year.
The FT is also being boosted by the demand for digital content with digital subscriptions now standing at more than 180,000.