Amazon E-book Sales Top Traditional Books

[Earnest Cavalli]

Amazon E-book Sales Top Traditional Books

Electronic books are now outselling the classic ink and paper kind on the world's largest online retailer.

Word of this paradigm shift comes straight from Amazon, which claims that since April 1 it has sold 105 e-books for every 100 printed books its patrons purchased. This ratio excludes customers downloading free e-books, but includes both hardcover and softcover books, as well as printed books for which there are no electronic analogue.

Though grim tidings for bibliophiles who enjoy the heft, texture and scent of an actual book, this news comes as joyous to Amazon. The retailer, which analysts estimate is responsible for two-thirds of all U.S. e-book sales, took this opportunity to promote the latest iteration of its Kindle e-book reader [http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Wireless-Reader-Wifi-Graphite/dp/B002Y27P3M]. Despite only being on the market for five weeks, the new Kindle is the firm's best-selling device (no doubt thanks to the lowered price tag subsidized by the ads that appear while the thing is in standby mode).

If you've followed the tech scene over the last decade, this really shouldn't come as much of a surprise. Just as more adaptable mammals overtook the dinosaurs, and .mp3s overtook compact discs, it seems that books stored in sub-1MB, glorified text files have overtaken professionally bound bundles of ink-laden paper.

I doubt this will actually kill books -- people still listen to confusingly sexy anime series [http://www.amazon.com/Led-Zeppelin-IV-Zoso/dp/B000SJ5XF0/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1305840232&sr=1-1].

Source: SFGate [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fn%2Fa%2F2011%2F05%2F19%2Ffinancial%2Ff072400D33.DTL]

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[Gxas]

I will always purchase the hardcover of an excellent book. My Nook is merely used as a lightweight means of reading. Not to mention that I can now currently travel with over 100 books without having to bring eight separate suitcases.

This won't kill books at all. The younger generations who are becoming increasingly illiterate are already doing that.

 

[CM156_v1legacy]

This won't kill books at all. The younger generations who are becoming increasingly illiterate are already doing that.

I say this too, and feel like an old man for doing so. "Crazy kids, get off mah lawn!"

OT: Yep, not at all shocked. And when we can implant books into our minds, that will beat out this means of distribution

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

good, data transfer over mechanically printed dead tree protocol is seriously antiquated technology

I like books also but they are hideously inefficient as information sources

I got mad the last time I had to look something up in a how-to book because I had to use an index instead of a keyword search

books should be collectors items and objects of art, they have no utility anymore

 

[Swyftstar]

I finally succumbed to the convenience of a Nook when I came to the realization I have no more room in my apartment for the clutter that buying two to three books every payday was causing. I love the thing. I miss the smell of paper though.

 

[Braedan]

I love the books themselves, but they are inefficient, and easily damaged. That said, I'll probably hang myself if we see a when day books are no longer printed.

 

[Togs]

Must admit Im a little dissappointed, proper physical books are always gonna outclass a digital form.

I mean to me at least half the pleasure of a book is how it smells and feels in your hands.

 

[gdv358]

I'm really encouraged by this. The publishing industry has been showing steep decline in sales for a while now and the common assumption is that people just aren't reading. But this shows that it's not just about shorter attention spans but rather a whole list of other factors. The publishing industry is competing in an entertainment market at a heavy disadvantage. With high overhead, limited selection and a price-point that can't compete there was almost no way they could keep it up for long.

The idea eBooks are showing that much momentum means there's still a reading population out there. And, frankly, I imagine it's about price. The typical hardcover can be in the high 20s to low 30s, even from an unknown author. The typical eBook tends to be under 10 dollars.

A traditional book may be preferred by the regular reading crowd, but you have to admit you're starting to become a minority. The sales have dipped so hard the industry has to do something to keep viable. Especially when you consider, aside from a handful of notable examples you could count on one hand (Yeah, I'll give Twilight credit on this one), some of the most successful books in the last decade have been "non-fiction" from people who had no business writing a book.

Reality show cast members, I'm looking at you.

Though, full disclosure, I may be biased: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/57492 (coming to Amazon soon)

 

[laserwulf]

Just try playing D&D with ebooks and you'll understand why physical copies will never completely die out. :>

 

[Julianking93]

Well at least people still actually, you know, read. >.>

 

[Ironic]

The New version of the kindle is awesome, i'm so glad i bought it even though I was of the book-romantic crowd (Ra ra ra feel of the paper ra ra) but I will still buy a hardcover, well illustrated version of a Book. It's the difference of seeing a nice picture or having that picture as a print/poster. It makes it more special, something tangible

 

[MarsProbe]

Yeh yeh, maybe so, but I'd take a physical book over an electronic copy any day. Nothing beats the feel of an epic 800 page hardback in your hands. Like all other mediums, there are some things that, no matter how convenient they may be, the physical side will be able to offer that the digital copies can't. For one, you can get your hardback copy signed by your favourite author should you just so happen to meet them, but you wouldn't exactly be able to wave your Kindle at them in the same way and expect similar results.

Call me a dinosaur if you will, but you can keep your cold, clinical e-books. Support your local bookstore! And so on.

 

[kasperbbs]

I can read manga on my laptop, but i can`t imagine myself reading a book in this manner, i bet a lot of those sales happened simply because they couldn't find any place that sells them, or people are just lazy.

 

[gabe12301]

Yea....Ill stick with my nook.

 

[gdv358]

Yeh yeh, maybe so, but I'd take a physical book over an electronic copy any day. Nothing beats the feel of an epic 800 page hardback in your hands. Like all other mediums, there are some things that, no matter how convenient they may be, the physical side will be able to offer that the digital copies can't. For one, you can get your hardback copy signed by your favourite author should you just so happen to meet them, but you wouldn't exactly be able to wave your Kindle at them in the same way and expect similar results.

Call me a dinosaur if you will, but you can keep your cold, clinical e-books. Support your local bookstore! And so on.

Actually, as far as the eBook signing thing goes, they've already moved on that: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20057220-1.html

 

[Frenger]

I stumbled over this, which I found interesting;

http://blog.bookmarket.com/2010/05/amazon-kindle-swindle-authors-people.html

Enjoy.

 

[Jamous]

I'd imagine that's because the ebooks are cheaper, just as easy to read and take up less space than the hard copies.

 

[Therumancer]

I'd imagine that's because the ebooks are cheaper, just as easy to read and take up less space than the hard copies.

Actually, your not entirely correct about this. As someone who owns a (very old) Kindle, I can tell you first hand that a lot of books are cheaper to get hard copies of, rather than to buy electronically. For example when I fairly recently got a copy of Steven King's "Cell" on Kindle it cost me more money than it would have been to buy the actual, physical book.

The thing to understand is that as the Amazon shop itself will tell you, the prices are being set by the publishers. Understand that the publishers that own contracts for these writers manufacture the books, and as such have no real desire to be undercut by electronic formats since they want to sell books. As time goes on and the industry adapts, I think we're looking at a situation where E-books are going to be sort of a gimmick of conveinence for those that can afford them, rather than replacing the real thing. In order for things to actually change, the guys running the E-book services like Amazon are going to have to buy the contracts for the writers themselves and become publishers. This of course has the down side of these writers then becoming exclusive to specific services. You might have to choose say Steven King OR Dean Koontz if your a horror fan, rather than being able to choose between them on your platform of choice since it's not like going to a book store and finding their work a shelf or so apart despite potentially differant publishers.

Now it doesn't surprise me that book stores are taking a massive beating (Border's is apparently in trouble) and that Amazon has seen a sales changeover, but this is very much a fad occurance unless a lot of fundemental things change about this technology. Right now I think we're looking at a situation where progress is going to be killed by business interests due to E-book services not wanting to pay for the contracts of various writers and become publishers, and of course customers not wanting to have to deal with buying multiple E-book platforms as a result to get the books they want, and of course due to Publishers setting prices that are increasingly favorable to the media that they control (hardcopy). It's sort of like how the massive mess of business interests prevent us from all driving electric cars despite the technology to do so. Like it or not the gas companies own the infrastructure (not to mention the land the infrastructure occupies... ie the land the gas stations occupy in most cases) and work to blockade the development of (inter)national networks of electric charging stations and similar things... just as one issue. There are too many powerful business interests invested in keeping things they way they are for new technologies to easily replace anything.

Not to mention the simple fact that as a lot of futurist writers have pointed out, all of our written information going entirely to electronic format has disadvantages if say we wind up getting into a war that involves massive EMP or attacks on that infrastructure. A lot of scenarios dealing with an apocolypse, or a space-travel based "long night" are heavily based around the idea of almost all information being electronically based and being lost as a result. With more and more knowlege of, and interest in, EMP warfare at the very least, I think that goverments also have something of a vested interest in making sure we never see a complete electronic changeover, even if in the 11th hour I think we might see the goverments of the world step in and slam the brakes on to some extent. Today's science fiction is tomorrow's science fact, the "we never saw it coming" arguement in many science fiction settings has made it so we *DO* see something like that coming, and thus by the very
existance of the fiction we're liable to avoid the same fate if similar things happen.

It's an interesting thing to think about, but as I said, speaking simply for the here and now, I will say that it's not always cheaper to go electronic, and as time goes on I think publishers are going to make it more expensive simply for their own business interests. Later, when and if that obstacle is overcome, I think a full changeover will be prevented for other reasons.

 

[MarsProbe]

Actually, as far as the eBook signing thing goes, they've already moved on that: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20057220-1.html

Hmm, well that is nice, but, written in their own hand or not, it still seems less personal than actually having the actual book signed. As you can guess, I'm a sucker for these things. Got a book signed by Neal Stephenson when he was in the area a while back and got a nice hand written letter from one David Mitchell once. It's that human element, makes the difference, I think.