When Good e-Reader first burst onto the scene in 2009, the e-reader landscape was very different than what we see today. Amazon had been releasing Kindles for a few years and along with Sony’s e-readers were the only devices in retail. We saw the rise of Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and many other companies, as they experimented with electronic books and e-readers. Since our launch date 53,804,252 people have read our publication or visited the App Store we launched last year.
e-Readers and ebooks have come a long way since we first started. At the time, something was very compelling about having a library of thousands of books in your pocket. I have always been a reader, learning how to read at 3 with those old Star Wars read along records, and I was hooked ever since.
When we started, there were no iPads, no tablets to speak of, e-readers were very fringe, and most libraries’ entire digital strategy was PDF files. We have seen the rise of digital libraries, digital magazines, digital newspapers, the onslaught of self-publishing, and the companies that have risen up to fill voids in the market. We now see e-readers in every single major store and many publishers are seeing 24% of their entire revenue stream stem from digital.
The entire Good e-Reader team is very happy with the way the industry has grown up in a short period of time, and companies that only have been in business for a few years are being sold for billions of dollars. It is very exciting for us to see the rise of an entirely new industry and we’ve been in the game long before 95% of the online publications even knew what an e-reader or tablet was.
We have had a fun time traveling the entire world covering digital books, e-readers, tablets, and digital publishing news. I have been lucky enough to visit Taiwan, London, Germany, New York, San Francisco, Toronto, Seattle, and many other cities and countries covering the news. It was always very important to our entire team to not just parrot the news, but make the news. Be there live on the scene, getting the essential stories, conducting interviews, and talking with the movers and shakers of the publishing world.
We take great pride in being the most beloved and respected news sources in the world that focus on digital reading. We have produced over 675 YOUTUBE videos and our entire channel has millions of hours already watched. We have launched an eBook Lending Site, an App Store, a Cloud eBook Storage Locker, and purchased a local company to provide schools and the general public with e-readers. We are also proud to sponsor great companies like the IDPFÂ in determining the future course of ebooks and digital formats. We are heavily invested in the digital realm and are here to stay.
I would like to thank everyone in the industry that has granted us an interview and to the many friends of our website. It is very exciting for us to meet old friends at all of the events we visit, and it feels like you all are family. I would also like to thank our loyal readers, some of whom have been with us since the very beginning. Our entire staff has been doing a great job maturing as writers and globetrotting in search for the latest scoop.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.