E-book sales outstripping real books for first time, claims Amazon

 

 

By Niall Firth

Last updated at 5:58 PM on 20th July 2010

 

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Amazon's Kindle can be used to view e-books

 

Sales of digital e-books have outstripped real books for the first time, according to Amazon.

The firm said that it has sold 143 e-books for its Kindle e-reader for every 100 hardcover books over the past three months.

And that rate has accelerated with Amazon selling 180 e-books for every 100 hardcovers in the past month.

Amazon’s Kindle bookstore now offers more than 630,000 books as well as over 1.8 million free, out-of-copyright, pre-1923 books.

Today, Amazon.com announced that sales of its Kindle device had also accelerated over the past three months, a change that the firm described as a ‘tipping point’.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, said: 'We've reached a tipping point with the new price of Kindle--the growth rate of Kindle device unit sales has tripled since we lowered the price from $259 to £189.

'In addition, even while our hardcover sales continue to grow, the Kindle format has now overtaken the hardcover format.

'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.'

Amazon sold more than three times as many Kindle books in the first half of 2010 as in the first half of 2009, the firm said.

In May Gogle announced it was also entering the e-book market and plans to let users buy digital copies of books which are not tied to any particular device.

Users will also have access to over 12million books, both in-print and out-of-print, already scanned by Google. This vast library is greater than the selection of material available through Amazon or Apple.

 

Users of Apple's new iPad downloaded 1.5million digital books in the tablet's first month on release.

 

As electronic readers have gained in popularity, books are increasingly predicted to become the next sector to be caught up by the online revolution after music and film.

 

Technology research company Forrester estimated sales of e-readers in the U.S. alone at three million in 2009. That figure is expected to double to more than six million this year.

 

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1296180/E-book-sales-outstripping-real-books-time-claims-Amazon.html#ixzz0uFGbb7A1

Excuse me but:

"it has sold 143 e-books for its Kindle e-reader for every 100 hardcover books"

 

Fair enough, but how many paper-back books has it sold for those 100 hard-cover books?

 

Besides e-books are one of the biggest rip-offs, same price or more expensive than real books, for vastly reduced costs to the seller, plus you can't give it to a friend/sell it on/give to charity shops/do a swap etc

E-books don't suck (except for the fact that they aren't actual books), the prices do. I would never buy an e-book if I wanted to read the book for fun but it would be so convenient to get digital textbooks. Here e-textbooks are about 20-30% cheaper than normal books, so there is no point in getting them as second hand books are a lot cheaper. But then you have to carry more weight, which isn't great either. :dozey: