by Claire_Wolfe

Created on: July 23, 2010

The future of the publishing world has shifted dramatically with the announcement from Amazon that the sale of e-books has overtaken sales of the hardback book. This could be due to the recent increase in sales of Amazon’s Kindle e-reader. Although Amazon won’t confirm actual figures it says that sales of the Kindle have tripled in the last six months and it has now topped the list as one of their bestselling products.

In the last quarter, Amazon slashed their prices of the Kindle to $189, making it more affordable. However, many people feel that the reason so many e-books have sold on this platform is mainly due to the release of the ipad from Apple. The ipad is linked with ibooks, Apple’s e-book store and due to the popularity of the ipad, they have made e-books both more accessible to a wider audience and easier to access and buy the e-books. Amazon probably were forced to slash their prices to make the Kindle more competitive against the ipad.

Figures that were released by Amazon on Monday 19th July revealed that for every 100 hardback books sold, the Kindle sells 143 e-books and that doesn’t include samples or free books. Interestingly enough though, Amazon mentions nothing about paperbacks which have always been a bigger seller against hardback books because they were always cheaper and most people were prepared to wait for the paperback version to be released.

The increase might also have something to so with the amount of e-books available to Kindle readers. There are over 630,000 available to buy and over 1.8 million e-books that can be downloaded for free, which seems like a lot more than ibooks has. Althought it doesn’t confirm the amount ibooks has loaded, according to one website there are only 60,000 to buy and 30,000 free ones. Also, the e-books on Kindle are cheaper than print books, costing an average of $10 per e-book whereas to buy a hardback book it would cost you, on average, $26.

There is also a Kindle application that can be downloaded onto the ipad, iphone, blackberry or any android phone that allows users to access their books. This is useful because, as Amazon advertises it, if the Kindle breaks then users can still read the books they have bought. So if ibooks hasn’t got many e-books available, users can download the Kindle application and buy books from there. This might explain the increase in sales, but has this been due to the release of the ipad or would it have happened if the ipad had not been launched?

However, e-book sales are still only a fraction of print book sales. Publishers Weekly issued figures that said in 2009 hardback sales were $4.4 billion, paperback was $5.1 billion and e-books was only $8.1 million, which is only 1% of print book sales.

But as one person commented, if Amazon are telling the truth about the figures, then where are all these e-readers? It is not often that you see people reading on a e-reader so do they keep them at home? There are certainly advantages of owning one, and if the popularity in the ipad is anything to go by then Amazon’s figures are quite believable. But is does beg the question if the figures are truthful or not, considering the oversight of the paperback sales figures and the fact they won’t reveal just how many Kindle readers they have sold in the last two quarters. The publishing world is changing, but possibly not quite as dramatically as everyone seems to think.

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