It looks like the end is near for the humble paperback book, the digital e-book has taken over Amazon.com, the worlds leading retailer.
After Amazon reported its latest earnings, they said they were selling more Kindle books than paperback books. However the gap isn’t huge, but it’s a significant milestone for the e-book. Since January 1, for every 100 paperbacks that were sold on Amazon, 115 Kindle books were. To add Amazon said that since the beginning of the year, they’ve sold 3 times as many e-books for the Kindle than they have hardcover books.
This information is from across the entire Amazon.com US site and includes sales of books where there isn’t even a Kindle edition, it doesn’t however include all the free e-books available. It would be interesting to see if e-books are outselling paperbacks in Europe on the other Amazon stores. Somehow I don’t think they are since the Kindle isn’t half as popular over here in Europe, but it’s becoming more prominent by the day.
It was previously known that Kindle e-book sales were well ahead of the hardcover sales which are generally more expensive, but this is the first time that e-book sales have beaten paperback ones.
Reports suggest that Amazon have sold more than 8 million Kindles in 2010 but Amazon have declined to give any specific figures. What also gave e-book sales a big boost for Amazon were the millions of iPads,iPhones and iPod Touches which have been purchased, not to mention the Android devices which all have access to Amazons store for e-books.
This news doesn’t bode well for traditional brick and mortar book shops which will start to suffer big time. It’s estimated that consumers spent $1 Billion on e-book sales in 2010 and it’s expected to reach $1.3 billion in 2011 and by 2014, e-books would make up 50% of all book sales.
I wouldn’t be surprised if many brick and mortar book stores start downsizing now, 53 % of them expect print sales to decrease this year.
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