Best Buy, Verizon to Boost E-Book Sales by Millions

Sept. 25, 2009 - PRLog -- (New York, New York)--Best Buy and Verizon have joined the eBook craze with a new reading device that may rival Amazon's best-selling Kindle.

Called the iRex DR800SG, it is already one of Europe's most popular e-readers. Priced at $399, the touch-screen device will be able to buy digital books and newspapers wirelessly through the 3G networks of Verizon, AT&T and Sprint. Suppliers include Barnes & Noble's eBookstore and NewspaperDirect, offering more than a thousand papers.

"Over five million e-readers are expected to be sold this year as eBooks continue to grow exponentially in popularity," says Joel Hochman, cofounder of Arbor Books (www.arborbooks.com), a high-end ghostwriting and self-publishing firm. "If you add this to the millions of cell phones that can also act as e-readers, digital books will take an even larger chunk of print sales."

Thousands of Best Buy employees have been trained to demonstrate e-readers like the Sony Reader and iRex, and all the chain's 1,048 stores will have dedicated areas to showcase the different devices.

The black-and-gray iRex (with an eight-inch screen) is similar to rivals like the Kindle DX, which has a ten-inch screen and costs $489, and Sony's new $399 Reader Daily Edition with its seven-inch screen.

"EBooks and eBook downloads are the future," says Larry Leichman, cofounder of Arbor Books (www.arborbooks.com). "Just as with music, our publishing industry is undergoing an exciting revolution as books move from hard copies in stores to online downloads. And with the Internet acting as the great equalizer, content will be king--all authors will have equal shots at fame and fortune. Ghostwriters and ghostwriting will be in greater demand than ever as people seek to capitalize on their story ideas or advice."

E-books can currently be read through the following devices:

Kindle
Sony Reader
iRex
iPhone, BlackBerry and other mobile devices, including PDAs and smartphones
iPod and iPod Touch
Plastic Logic
PC and Mac Home

Barnes & Noble said it planned to market eBooks "in really big and interesting ways" to the seventy-seven million customers who walk into its stores every year.

The immediate goal for the eBook market is to bring the cost of e-readers to $99 or less, which could happen if wireless providers like Verizon subsidize the devices and sell them in their stores, as they do with netbooks. This could happen soon because wireless providers get paid for the use of the bandwidth required to transmit content like digital books--a potential major revenue stream.

The next anticipated steps are Apple's entry into the market with a more general-purpose tablet computer and Google's possible move with its own device to complement its book catalog and book programs.

Arbor Books is known worldwide for its ghostwriting division, which works with Fortune 500 companies, Hollywood celebrities, sports figures, politicians, businesspeople and anyone who is interested in having their fiction or nonfiction book become a reality. Contact them at info@arborbooks.com or 877-822-2500.

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ARBOR BOOKS , Inc. (" ABI ") is the world's premier, award-winning ghostwriting and self-publishing company.