Digital sales outstrip hardbacks for first time in US

Amazon US says it has sold 143 digital books for every 100 hardbacks in the last three months.  

Read this article from the Guardian about the growth in ebook sales via the bookselling giant Amazon

This announcement might come as just the sort of bad news that lovers of books (physical objects made of paper with print and a cover) were dreading. Amazon said sales of digital books have outstripped US sales of hardbacks on its website for the first time.

The rate of change is also getting faster: Amazon said that in the most recent four weeks, the rate reached 180 ebooks for every 100 hardbacks sold. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, said sales of the Kindle and ebooks had reached a "tipping point", with five authors including Larsson, author of Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, and Stephenie Meyer, who penned the Twilight series, each selling more than 500,000 digital books. 

Key points and notes of caution:

·         While the volume of sales is impressive and the rate of adoption of ebooks perhaps faster than expected, the value of the books sold in digital format is not equivalent yet to that of their physical format version. Some titles in the Kindle top 10 were selling for as little as 75p.

·         Are ebook sales damaging those of physical sales? Not yet it seems – heardback sales are up 22% this year in the US.  Ebooks now account for 6% of sales in the US consumer book market. 

·         In the UK, the percentage is smaller and the consumer sales (£5m) are still dwarfed by sales of digital content in the academic-professional sector. Total digital sales were c.£150m. There are fewer titles available in the UK.

·         Many people are still waiting for the price of e-readers to come down before making the investment and waiting to see what the impact of the iPad will be on Kindle and book pricing.