Is the electronic book approaching the tipping point? That topic both energized and unnerved humans attending BookExpo America, the publishing and bookselling industry’s annual trade show, which ended at the convention center [in Los Angeles] on Sunday.

Much of the talk was focused on the Kindle, Amazon’s electronic reader, which has gained widespread acclaim for its ease of use.

Jeffrey Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, spent much of a packed session on Friday evangelizing about the Kindle, which he said already accounts for 6 percent of his company’s unit sales of books that are available in both paper and electronic
formats.

But excitement about the Kindle, which was introduced in November, plus worries some publishing executives, who fear Amazon’s still-growing ability as a bookseller. Those executives note that Amazon currently sells most of its Kindle books to customers for a price well below what it pays publishers, and they anticipate that it will not

be lengthy before Amazon begins using the Kindle’s popularity as a lever to demand that publishers cut prices.

Overall, traffic at the book fair seemed lower than in past years, reflecting perhaps that some editors did not build the towering trip west from Manhattan, as well as the fact that the growth in the book business has slowed.

While authors including William Shatner, Andre Dubus 3rd and Ty Pennington drew big crowds of booksellers seeking autographs, several books by little-known authors scheduled for publication were being pushed hard by publishers. Those include two that use witches, of a sort, as their protagonists and one whose author is in shaman training.

One, “The Heretic’s Daughter,” is a novel about Martha Carrier, the first woman to be accused, tried and hanged as a witch in Salem, Massachusetts. The author, Kathleen Kent, is a 10th-generation descendant of Carrier (though not a…

Orginal post by Top Tech News