AAP (the Association of American Publishers) dropped a report on March 17 that showed clear evidence of something those of us who have adopted e-readers have suspected for a long time: the future is digital.
The figures were drawn from January, 2011 sales figures for the industry and were compared to figures from January, 2010 to show the trends. Overall book sales (print and digital) were down slightly over the year, but the big news was the massive, 115.8% increase in e-book sales, combined with a decline in printed book sales. The association previously released a report for all of 2010, showing that e-book sales were up 164% overall for that year; in fact, they noted that in the nine years they had been tracking e-book sales, the numbers always represented a significant year-over-year increase.
Clearly, the publishing industry is in transition. The days when digital versions of a book would outsell the traditional, printed copy are no longer one-offs like the Christmas day when gadget hounds unwrapped their new Kindles and immediately downloaded e-books en masse. Digital downloads of books are growing (and rather quickly). This may help to explain some of the flailing that's taken place in recent weeks, with publishers and e-book retailers implementing policies ranging from establishing artificial lifespans on digital copies, to trying to prevent strangers from lending each other e-books. At this point, e-books still account for less than ten percent of overall book sales (8.7% of dollar value in January), but we've seen this same analog to digital scenario play out with music, cameras and movies. Digital is the future and e-readers are no longer on the bleeding edge, they're hitting the mainstream.
In terms of which book categories suffered the biggest hits in January 2011, versus the previous year, AAP reports that Adult Hardcover sales dropped 11.3%, Adult Paperback was down 19.7%, Young Adult Paperbacks were down 17.7% and sales in Adult Mass Market dropped 30.9%. Draw your own conclusions, but when I see those categories, they seem to match pretty closely with the current demographic for e-readers. I think we're well past the point when anyone can try to brush off e-readers as a fad.
Full press release here.