Searches for eBooks double

Interest in electronic readers, or eBooks as they have come to be called, has increased significantly according to research from Hitwise.

The company, which monitors internet search trends and patterns, said that searches for eBooks had doubled between January 2008 and 2009.

The devices let readers store and read books in electronic formats. There are four main eBooks currently available: the Amazon Kindle, the Sony Reader, the Borders iLiad, and the Bookeen Cybook V3.

Read Web User's review of the Sony Reader

The Kindle, however, is not available in the UK and Amazon has given no date as to when it might be released.

Hitwise said that searches for the Sony Reader dominate queries in the UK. Two websites in particular have benefited from the rise of the eBooks, free-ebooks.net and Project Gutenberg, both of which offer hundreds of free books to download.

Robin Goad, research director of Hitwise UK, said: "As you would expect, eBook searches are always on the look out for free stuff and the second-most popular search including the term 'ebooks' is 'free ebooks'."

www.hitwise.com
www.sony.co.uk
www.amazon.co.uk