E-Books Top Hardcovers at Amazon
Posted on 21. Jul, 2010 by Chris Matney in Book Publishing, Front Page Posts
A NY Times article on Monday announced that sales of Kindle books outnumbered the sales of hardcover books during the period March through June 2010. All industry signs point to an acceleration of this trend. I suspect that it won’t be too many months before we see the same headline for paperback books.
The other trends that are pushing this rapid change are: a lower price point for buying an e-Book reader like the Kindle or Nook (under $200 and falling), a lower price point for buying a an e-Book ($9.99 for new releases), improved technology (sit an iPad next to a Kindle 2 to see my point), and better incentives for publishers looking to put their titles into electronic formats (we get 70% instead of 35% of e-book sales). So, what’s going to stop this avalanche?
Technology is both the best friend and worst enemy of the e-book market right now. Give people value, new experiences and convenience and we will see acceleration. Try to force readers into having to choose between being able to read Clancy and King depending on their hardware or make them re-buy books for new formats and we will see deceleration.
I don’t think anyone believes that the Kindle 2 is the end-state of e-books – the room for improvement is vast. And, there will always be a market for paper books – hardcover titles for collectors and paperbacks for taking to the beach. However, this is a milestone for our industry and worthy of note. Well, back to reading my current book – where did I put my cell phone?
3 Responses to “E-Books Top Hardcovers at Amazon”
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“Technology is both the best friend and worst enemy of the e-book market right now.”
I have to agree wholeheartedly. Working in the portable-media-player industry, I see issues with digital-rights management (AKA digital RESTRICTIONS management) on a repeating basis. Too often, industry forces (either copyright holders or technology owners) jockey to limit consumer choices. You buy a media device and you get locked in to limited formats and limited distribution. In my opinion, such limitations end up hurting the consumer, the distributor, and the hardware vendor. Eventually, the copyright holder is also affected. And the level of effort directed at DRM issues is staggering. If that effort were redirected at more positive features, the effects would be wonderful.
Those in publishing find these announcements by the Amazon spin machine a bit misleading. Yes, ebooks are definitely on the rise. Yes, Amazon sells more of them than any other retailer. But that they are out selling Hardcover books doesn’t seem that noteworthy.
Hardcover books have been on the down swing for the last few years. Paperbacks and ebooks on the upswing. (It’s the economy stupid.) But that’s not all, Amazon is counting all ebooks sold, not just those sold to Kindle owners. Add to the above statistics that the release of the iPad, and the Kindle Reader for iPad, PC and some other phones and devices all released within the last quarter and Doh! Sales are WAY up for ebooks. iPad sold 5 million ebooks alone during the first 65 days of availability. Yep they are trending up. But we have to put these announcements in the context of the larger market. And they haven’t come close to out-selling paperbacks—yet.
That’s not to say I’m not excited for what the future of reading, or rather ‘consuming’ content will bring. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
And the only thing stopping this avalanche? The lack of a single format for ebooks. Give it that, and there is every chance paper books would succumb. But paper books have several advantages that ebooks will never have: the pleasures of touch and smell (I’ll never part with my faded, yellowed old Tolkiens), rugged durability (some places susceptible to damp might kill an iPad), lendability and cheapness (lose a novel? buy a new one. Lose an iPad loaded with years of novels, photos and music? Despair.) Paper has a way to go yet, especially if recycled paper is used, and POD machines are installed in bookstores.