Another data point for the growth of the eBook market comes from data released from Amazon.com:
“Amazon.com customers now purchase more Kindle books than hardcover books–astonishing when you consider that we’ve been selling hardcover books for 15 years, and Kindle books for 33 months,” according to Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos.
And Kindle eBook sales are accelerating:
- Over the past 3 months Amazon has sold 143 Kindle eBooks for every 100 hardcover books
- Over the past month, Amazon has sold 180 Kindle eBooks for every 100 hardcover books
- Amazon sold more than three times as many Kindle eBooks in the first half of 2010 as in the first half of 2009
- The Association of American Publishers’ (AAP) latest data reports that e-book sales grew 163 percent in the month of May and 207 percent year-to-date through May. Kindle book sales in May and year-to-date through May exceeded those growth rates.
This is across Amazon.com’s entire U.S. book business and includes sales of hardcover books where there is no Kindle edition. Free Kindle books are excluded and if included would make the numbers even higher. What’s interesting is that this is with a relatively modest book inventory: 630,000 eBooks, with an additional 1.8 million out-of-copyright e-books made available for free. It also clearly coincides with the growth in sales of the Kindle itself — device unit sales accelerated each month in the second quarter–both on a sequential month-over-month basis and on a year-over-year basis. (Unlike Apple, Amazon still won’t disclose exactly how many Kindles have been sold. Isn’t it about time they did?) It stands to reason, more people with the device… more eBook sales. However it is outpacing hardcovers. And one would think there are many more people available to buy hardcovers than eBooks. It hasn’t yet outsold paperbacks, which may be the larger of the three types of books.
Publishers are still highly selective in publishing eBook titles because they still lack the infrastructure to quickly and easily put out all books as both hardcover and eBooks. There are many more books that could potentially be e-published, especially if they had better eBook publishing and distribution processes. It illustrates both just how far the industry has come, and just how fare it is from getting to “long-tail” eBook publishing.
The continued rapid growth of eBooks is further underscored by the AAPs year-to-date data for eBooks sales: The 13 submitting publishers to that category currently comprise 8.48 % of the total trade books market, compared to 2.89% percent for the same period last year — triple the growth of last year and nearing double digits — a marker for the industry that there is real money to be made in eBook, and companies that lack an eBook strategy could miss out on this increasingly significant revenue stream.
It is interesting to note that, compared to last year, people are purchasing more books, period. Perhaps it is a sign of the improving economy, or perhaps it is an indication that people (especially adults) are reading more in general. The data is unclear on the reason. What is clear is that eBooks continue to grow in popularity, and are unquestionably here to stay.