Amazon.com Now Sells More E-books than Print Books

In an announcement that will likely generate cheers as well as fears, Amazon.com says that it now sells more Kindle e-books than print books—paperback and hardcover—combined. Since April 1, Amazon says it has sold 105 Kindle books for every 100 print books, soft or hardcover, including print titles that do not have Kindle editions. The figures do not include free Kindle titles.

The Kindle was introduced by Amazon.com in 2007; by 2010 Kindle e-books sales had passed hardcover print titles and by late 2010 Kindle e-book sales had surpassed paperback titles. Amazon introduced the Kindle With Special Offers, a Kindle 3 with ads on its screensaver, for $114, which Amazon says has now become the bestselling Kindle device.

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said, “Customers are now choosing Kindle books more often than print books. We had high hopes that this would happen eventually, but we never imagined it would happen this quickly—we've been selling print books for 15 years and Kindle books for less than four years.”

 

From PW Weekly

 

Barnes & Noble Sales Jump Led By Digital Products

Sales of e-books through BN.com are more than double that of sales of all print books and B&N estimated it has a 25% share of the e-book market. Same store sales of BN.com jumped 64% in the quarter, to $319.4 million driven by sales ok Nooks and e-books. Asked when the unit, which lost $50.5 million in the quarter, will make money CEO William Lynch said BN.com will be profitable faster than originally thought. He wouldn’t say if BN.com will be profitable in fiscal 2012, but said losses will be significantly minimized.

Read the rest of the story.

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Indie Authors Blow Away Traditional Gatekeepers and Storm the Castle of Newspaper Bestseller Lists

By Steve WindwalkerEditor of Kindle Nation Daily

Call it the "Paper Curtain," if you like.

But like the Berlin Wall, it's coming down.

As a result of the Publishing Perestroika that has been unleashed by readers and writers connecting primarily around Kindle content in the short span of just 39 months, the walls that have kept self-published and ebook authors from being included in prestigious newspaper bestseller lists will come crashing down this week.

Tomorrow, USA TODAY will roll out its weekly list of the top 150 bestselling books in the U.S., just as it does every Thursday.



But for the very first time, USA Today announced today, its list for the week ending February 6 will include bestselling self-published direct-to-Kindle authors like Amanda Hocking. Hocking's books currently rank #3, #11, #12, #27, #37, #41, and #46 on the Kindle Store top 50 bestsellers, and "the three titles in her Trylle Trilogy (Switched, Torn and Ascend, the latest) will make their debuts in the top 50 of USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list," wrote USA Today's Carol Memmott in an article entitled "Authors catch fire with self-published ebooks."

Read the rest of the story at http://kindlehomepage.blogspot.com/2011/02/publishing-perestroika-indie-authors.html.

E-book Sales Up 164% as Other Trade Segments Fall

From Publishers Weekly

E-book sales jumped 164.4% in 2010, to $441.3 million, at the 14 publishers who report sales to the Association of American Publishers monthly sales program. Sales in December rose almost exactly the same amount, 164.8%, to $49.5 million. Sales in all other trade segments fell in the year with the exception of downloadable audio which had a 38.8% gain to $81.9 million.

 

Sales in adult hardcover fell by 5.1% at the 17 reporting publishers, while trade paper declined 2% at the 19 houses that report.Mass market paperback sales fell 6.3% at the nine paperback houses; in children's hardcover sales decline 9.5% and paperback 5.7%. Fourteen publishers reported sales to AAP.

Kindle e-books sales overtake paperback books on Amazon.com.

Amazon.com is now selling more Kindle books than paperback books. Since the beginning of the year, for every 100 paperback books Amazon has sold, the Company has sold 115 Kindle books. Additionally, during this same time period the Company has sold three times as many Kindle books as hardcover books. This is across Amazon.com's entire U.S. book business and includes sales of books where there is no Kindle edition. Free Kindle books are excluded and if included would make the numbers even higher.

The Company sold millions of third-generation Kindle devices with the new advanced paper-like Pearl e-ink display in the fourth quarter and the third-generation Kindle eclipsed "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" as the bestselling product in Amazon's history.

The U.S. Kindle Store now has more than 810,000 books including New Releases and 107 of 112 New York Times Bestsellers. Over 670,000 of these books are $9.99 or less, including 74 New York Times Bestsellers. Millions of free, out-of-copyright, pre-1923 books are also available to read on Kindle.

Amazon added to its growing list of "Buy Once, Read Everywhere" Kindle apps, launching a Kindle app for Windows Phone 7. In addition, the Kindle for Android app was updated to enable users to buy, read and sync over 100 Kindle newspapers and magazines. All Kindle apps let customers "Buy Once, Read Everywhere"--on Kindle, Kindle 3G, Kindle DX, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, Mac, PC, BlackBerry and Android-based devices. All Kindle apps are free and incorporate Amazon's Whispersync technology, which allows readers to seamlessly switch between devices. With Kindle Worry-Free Archive, books purchased from the Kindle Store are automatically backed up online in the Kindle library on Amazon where they can be re-downloaded wirelessly for free, anytime.