Palm Ebooks Sales Increase 40% in 2001

Posted on January 4, 2002

Palm Digital Media announced that it sold almost 180,000 ebooks in 2001, up more than 40 percent from 2000. Palm, Inc. has also named its bestselling ebooks for 2001. Palm is still bullish on ebooks despite some recent bad news for the industry -- the closing of epublishers iPublish.com, Mighty Words and Random House's AtRandom ebook imprint.

``This is an emerging industry, and the steady growth that we are experiencing shows that there is a great deal of interest in ebooks,'' said Mike Segroves, director of business development for Palm Digital Media. ``We average 1,000 new customers a week -- a clear indicator that handheld computer users are adopting this technology.''

Palm Digital Media, a publisher and distributor of ebooks for handheld computers, offers a list of 3,500 titles from major U.S. publishing houses. The ebooks are available for reading with Palm Reader, software which runs on Palm Powered handhelds.

Palm Digital Media Top 10 Best-selling Fiction Ebooks for 2001

1. Dreamcatcher by Stephen King (Simon & Schuster)
2. Timeline by Michael Crichton (Random House)
3. Riding the Bullet by Stephen King (Simon & Schuster)
4. The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub (Random House)
5. Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub (Random House)
6. The Hades Factor by Robert Ludlum and Gayle Lynds (St. Martin's Press)
7. Digital Fortress by Dan Brown (St. Martin's Press)
8. Star Wars: Darth Maul: Saboteur by James Luceno (Random House)
9. K-PAX by Gene Brewer (St. Martin's Press)
10. The Jupiter Theft by Donald Moffett (e-reads)

1. The Procrastinator's Handbook by Rita Emmett, (Walker and Company)
2. Jack: Straight From the Gut by Jack Welch and John Byrne (AOL Time Warner Book Group)
3. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey (Franklin Covey)
4. Surfing the Edge of Chaos by Pascale, Millemann and Gioja (Crown Publishers)
5. Get Anyone To Do Anything and Never Feel Powerless Again by David J. Lieberman (St. Martin's Press)
6. Useless Sexual Trivia by Shane Mooney (Fireside)
7. Dave Barry Is Not Taking This Sitting Down by Dave Barry (Crown Publishers)
8. 52 Saturday Nights by Joan Elizabeth Lloyd (AOL Time Warner Book Group)
9. Now and Forever, Let's Make Love by Joan Elizabeth Lloyd (AOL Time Warner Book Group)
10. The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler (Villard)