Springer leaps ahead in academic e-book market
By Andrew EdgecliffeJ ohnson in New York reporting FT.com
Published: July 6 2009 03:00
Electronic book readers such as Amazon's Kindle are transforming academic publishing much faster than the consumer market, according to Springer Science & Business Media, the second largest scientific, technical and medical publisher.

While most "trade" publishers expect e-book revenues to account for no more than 3 per cent of sales this year, e-books accounted for a "significant" amount of Springer's turnover, Olaf Ernst, its president of e-product management and innovation, told the FT.
The private equity-owned group, which appointed Goldman Sachs and UBS this spring to raise equity, declined to disclose exact figures on e-book revenues.

However, Mr Ernst said: "We expect in the next few years that within the STM [scientific, technical and medical] market more than half of our book revenues will come from e-books."
Springer has made 22,500 books available on the Kindle and rival devices - a multiple of the number of titles available from most large trade publishers.
Although Springer still supplies physical copies, "the demand and use of the content clearly moved towards electronic in the last few years".