Will Recession Help E-Books Emerge?

(MoneyWatch)  There's plenty of news on the eBook front these days:

• Amazon is introducing its new Kindle today, with an exclusive new Stephen King novel available only on this device.
• Google announced recently that it has scanned 1.5 million public domain books and formatted them so they can be read on mobile devices like the iPhone.
• The startup Plastic Logic is unveiling the prototype of its e-Reader device tomorrow. This reader is larger than the Kindle and the Sony Reader, which are currently the most popular devices for downloading eBooks. The company has deals with the Financial Times, among other publications and a newspaper aggregator, which will allow it to display magazines and newspapers at something closer to the size of their print versions.

The flood of new material available both for the Kindle-type devices and the smaller mobile units, courtesy of Google, seems likely to help eBooks reach a tipping point this year, despite the economic downturn. Readers are not going to stop reading, but they may reduce spending for books. (One recent report documented increased use of libraries nationwide.)

The increasing competition among companies to secure a foothold in this emerging market should drive the cost of eReaders down, while the price of eBooks themselves is falling, courtesy of the work done by Smashwords and others.

And, with millions of people out of work, Americans have more time to read than any time in the past quarter century. All of which indicates 2009 may be the year that electronic books make their breakthrough.