E-books Outsell Hardcover at Amazon; Soon to Surpass Paperback

In what might come as a surprise to no one, Amazon earlier this week announced that ebook sales on its site are outselling hardcovers, and it’s expected that in the second quarter, they’ll also outsell paperbacks. If you’re not impressed by this, your opinion might change when I tell you that these figures were gained from actual purchases – free ebooks weren’t weighed in.

Being that paper magazines and newsprint have been dwindling in demand for quite a while, it’s of little surprise to see that digital books are favored in lieu of paper ones. As far as I see it, books are the perfect type of media to be digitalized, because while a magazine is light, a book can be oddly shaped, overly large, smelly… and so on.

I admit that I find it rather impressive that ebooks are selling so well, because I literally don’t know anyone who uses an ebook reader. Most of my family read books, but none of them have even expressed interest in such a device. On airplanes, however, I’ve seen them all over, so it’s clear that there is some interest, as if it wasn’t proven enough with Amazon’s details.

If you’re a book reader, do you use an ebook reader? And either way, why do you choose the method you do? Personally, I do read the odd book, but I don’t read enough to invest into an e-reader. Of course, perhaps if I got one, I’d read more. It’s interesting to think about!

“Thursday Amazon.com announced that they’re selling more ebooks than paperback books — and three times as many ebooks as hardcovers. If you combine their statistics into a pie chart, it shows that 45% of all the books Amazon sells are now ebooks. And Amazon’s statistic doesn’t include all the free ebooks people are downloading to their Kindles, so if just one user downloads a free ebook for every nine paid ebook purchases — then Amazon is already delivering more digital ebooks than they are print editions.”