It seems like only yesterday that I was reporting on the big showing by e-books, a 164% increase in sales of digital books in 2010 (compared to the previous year). Actually, it was two months ago. You can read it here. And we've grown accustomed to hearing about e-books outselling their dead tree (i.e., paper) equivalents at Amazon.com during the after-Christmas rush, when everyone is madly downloading content for their new Kindle. But this latest press release from Amazon.com may well indicate that we've reached a tipping point in terms of e-books, that point where digital becomes the dominant format, with no going back. Amazon.com is now selling more e-books than all print versions (hardcover and paperback) combined. Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Founder and CEO is quoted as saying: “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."
Among the highlights of Amazon's press release:
- Since April 1, for every 100 print books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 105 Kindle books. This includes sales of hardcover and paperback books by Amazon where there is no Kindle edition. Free Kindle books are excluded and if included would make the number even higher.
- So far in 2011, the tremendous growth of Kindle book sales, combined with the continued growth in Amazon’s print book sales, have resulted in the fastest year-over-year growth rate for Amazon’s U.S. books business, in both units and dollars, in over 10 years. This includes books in all formats, print and digital. Free books are excluded in the calculation of growth rates.
- Amazon sold more than 3x as many Kindle books so far in 2011 as it did during the same period in 2010.
Read the full press release here. And if this seems like good news for e-book fans, just imagine the spike in e-book sales Amazon.com is likely to see when demand gets goosed by those rumored Kindle tablets due later this year...
