Blizzard Entertainment has achieved at least three New York Times Best Seller List titles in the past couple of years with World of Warcraft: Arthas and World of Warcraft: The Shattering by Christie Golden, and World of Warcraft: Shaman by Paul Benjamin.

Today, the New York Times announced yet another way Blizzard Entertainment might compete to get the rewarding title of a New York Times Best Seller. Another venue where sales of novels based on World of Warcraft, Starcraft II, and Diablo III can be tracked. Starting early 2011, the New York Times will introduce the New York Times Best Selling e-Book Fiction and Nonfiction Lists.

The digital era of books has caught up with traditional books with the intro of Kindle, Nook and the iPad — among other devices. The eBook market increased sales up to 190% in comparison with 2009. It’s hard not to find someone with one of these at the subway, bus or airplane nowadays.

It’s great that the New York Times decided to acknowledge the growth of eBook sales and to track them. It will make the eBook get a deeper foothold by reaching many of their list readers, and allow us to learn how well our favorite Blizzard novels are doing in the eBook format.

Personally, I like the eBook format better than the traditional print version. Curiously, I have no Kindle, iPad or any of the reader devices. I read mine on the PC. The eBook is eco-friendly, and allows me to search keywords at the press of a button to find something I’d like to reference in my articles — as opposed to manually browsing page by page hoping I can find a pin in a hay stack of 300+ pages.

Over a decade ago, I went crazy collecting X-Men comic books. All the over 10+ title spin-offs — to the point, I had over 1,600 issues. Most of it fit in two big plastic boxes, but some still exist stored in cardboard boxes taking space. In my current situation, all my collection resides in a storage room, away from my reach. Could you imagine how hard it is anyway to find a specific issue number? It’d take me forever to locate it in such a collection.

Thankfully, and regretfully, I learned of the Marvel Comics Digital Library. I’d have saved a lot of money and space back in the day. Coincidentally, I spent late last night reading the War of Kings: Ascension (Darkhawk), New Avengers: The Reunion, and some of the Dark Reign saga online in PDF format. The entire Marvel collection at the reach of my fingertips and eyes taking no space in my temp room. Though I have most of the Blizzard franchises novels in print, I have gone and purchased the eBook versions as well.

It feels the best option in this era to read novels in digital format. The eBook market has grown at the end of this decade to the point it’s nigh at par with the traditional print market’s sales.

    “To give the fullest and most accurate possible snapshot of what books are being read at a given moment you have to include as many different formats as possible, and e-books have really grown, there’s no question about it,” said Sam Tanenhaus, editor of the Book Review. The new listings, he added, give readers “the fullest picture we can give them about how a book is doing week to week.” — source