Amazon and Simon & Schuster have inked a deal to bring 5,000 new titles to the Kindle e-book reader that year. Amazon’s Kindle is a portable e-book reader that wirelessly downloads books, blogs, magazines, newspapers and personal documents to a high-resolution electronic paper.

Simon & Schuster’s latest e-book initiative will more than double the number of the publisher’s titles currently available on Kindle. Kindle customers will be able to discover, buy and read popular books such as Stephen R. Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective humans.

When added to books already available on Kindle, including thousands of new releases and bestsellers, these Simon & Schuster titles represent the huge majority of the publisher’s catalog.

“This announcement is significant considering it just indicates that wave is gathering momentum. It’s another step on the accelerator,” said Phil Leigh, senior analyst at Inside Digital Media. “Simon & Schuster is a major publishing house. So that indicates that mainstream publishers are

increasingly taking e-books seriously.”

Making the Digital Transition

Indeed, the initiative represents Simon & Schuster’s most concentrated effort to period to supply quality subject matter for the growing community of e-book readers who now want a broader and deeper assortment of titles to become available in the e-book format.

“At Simon & Schuster, we are excited by how many Kindle books we’re selling and the feedback from readers who want to read our titles on their Kindles,” said Carolyn Reidy, president and CEO of Simon & Schuster. “We have additionally learned that readers aren’t just looking for new or best-selling books, but additionally books that are older or hard to find.”

Reidy said the new titles made available for Amazon’s Kindle include books that have proven themselves to be of enduring interest. The selection of titles for the initiative was based on statistical analysis of physical books that…

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