Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Amazon claims ebook sales milestone

For the first time, sales of ebooks outstripped those of hardbacks


It is an announcement that will provoke horror among those who can think of nothing better than spending an afternoon rummaging around a musty old bookshop. In what could be a watershed for the publishing industry, Amazon said sales of digital books have outstripped U.S. sales of hardbacks on its Website for the first time.

Amazon claims to have sold 143 digital books for its e-reader, the Kindle, for every 100 hardback books over the past three months. The pace of change is also accelerating. Amazon said that in the most recent four weeks, the rate reached 180 ebooks for every 100 hardbacks sold.

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, said sales of the Kindle and ebooks had reached a “tipping point”, with five authors including Steig Larsson, the writer of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and Stephenie Meyer, who penned the Twilight series, each selling more than 500,000 digital books. Earlier this month Hachette said that James Patterson had sold 1.1m ebooks to date.
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Full report here Hindu

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