Ebooks Outsell Hardback Books on Amazon

Since lowering the price from $259 to $189, sales of Amazon's Kindle eReader have tripled, according to Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon.com. More astonishing, though, is his announcement that although hardcover book sales on Amazon.com have continued to grow, "the Kindle format has now overtaken the hardcover format. Amazon.com customers now purchase more Kindle books than hardcover books."

According to a July 19, 2010 news release, Amazon.com claims to have sold, over the three months prior, 143 Kindle books for every 100 hardback books. And the trend is accelerating. In the month prior, 180 Kindle books have been sold for every 100 hardbacks.

Is this the "tipping point" Amazon claims? Have we reached the beginning of the end of printed books? Many sources still say no.

David Teather reporting for the Guardian points out that, although ebook sales may be rising, sales of hardback books are not declining. In fact, according to the Association of American Publishers, sales of hardback books are up 22% this year.

And even if the day must come when printed books are more nostalgic than necessary, little may change in the way we find our books. Companies such as Overdrive, Ebrary, and NetLibrary supply ebooks to public libraries, and Overdrive, the largest of these suppliers, says that about 5,400 public libraries now offer ebooks.

True, independent bookstores, already struggling among big-name retailers, will either have to embrace the technology or disappear forever. But this is hardly impossible. Powell's City of Books, an independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon that fills a whole city block with more than a million new, used, and out of print books, listed their complete inventory online by 1996. Literary agent Nathan Bransford points out that "the good and enterprising [bookstores] who follow the Powell's model and embrace, rather than fear, the online world will have a reason to survive. Bookstores won't survive because we're nostalgic about them, They'll survive if they continue to give us reasons to buy from them."

Although most booklovers and bibliophiles cling to their printed page, if the prices of Kindle and other ereaders continue to drop, as the technology of ebooks advances, we all may find reason to make the switch.

Resources

News Release "Amazon.com Now Selling More Kindle Books Than Hardcover Books" http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=RssLanding&cat=news&id=1449176

Teather, David. Guardian.co.uk "Amazon's ebook milestone: digital sales outstrip hardbacks for first time in US" http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/20/amazon-ebook-digital-sales-hardbacks-us

Rich, Motoko. NY Times "So You Want to Borrow an E-Book ..." http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/14/so-you-want-to-borrow-an-e-book/

Bransford, Nathan. "Top 10 Myths About Our eBook Future" http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2010/07/top-10-myths-about-our-e-book-future.html