Amazon Sells More Ebooks On Christmas Than Real Books

ctmurray writes "Amazon reports for the first time ever they sold more ebooks on one day than real books. My wife is an ebook-only author and reported her largest single day sales on Christmas day, and December has been her best month ever as well. All those Kindles bought for this season are being seen in ebook sales." The battle with publishers over pricing seems to be coming to the fore as well.

Comments

New feature

[countertrolling]

All "books" come with disappearing ink.

Greedy publishers

[vvaduva]

Why isn't Amazon getting into the publishing business to avoid all these greedy publisher problems? They have enough weight to put out ebooks without the involvement of people who seek out to drain every dollar from the author of the book, so I am not getting it. Perhaps contractual obligations prevent them from doing so, but we are no longer living in the time when only the guy with the printing press dictated how things are done. Or am I wrong?

Re:Greedy publishers

[srothroc]

How is it clear that this is where publishing is headed? This makes no sense at all to me.

Booksurge allows for smaller runs of books with authors running their own publicity -- the only person I can think of who has done this successfully is Wil Wheaton, who had a leg up in the form of childhood fame. What it does not give you is an established infrastructure for support, connections with other publishers/countries, advances, editorial advice, and additional contracts/advertising. These are all things that I would imagine are very, very useful for writers.

For readers, traditional publishing houses offer filters in the form of editors and the people who read the slush pile. When you buy a book from a large publishing house like Tor, Penguin, or Macmillan, you can expect a certain level of quality in the writing. This isn't say that all of their books are good or will fit your tastes, but there's a certain standard that the editors at those houses will try to adhere to; it's how they stay in business.

To use a car analogy, a traditional publishing house is like a dealership that sells only new Hyundais; you might not like everything or the prices, but you can expect a certain standard. A self-publisher like Booksurge would be more like a dealership that specializes in selling cars built from the ground-up, or kit cars... by hobbyists. Sure, some people may know what they're doing and you'll get an amazing car, but a lot of them will probably be crap.

Re:Greedy publishers

[Mista2]

They already do allow authors to cut out the middelmen and go direct. As long as you hold the digital rights for your work, it can be easily formatted and uploaded for the kindle store, then you sit back and wait for your tiny percentage to roll in. But like with iPhones, you still have to market yourself like crazy as Amazon will put in no effort to get your book found when people are browsing.

Re:public insanity?

[Endo13]

Hate to break it to you, but Joe Sixpack isn't that savvy. He doesn't know what DRM is, and he hasn't a clue what fucked up his music. Same thing for Grandma Jones. They're more likely to think it's somehow the band's fault that their CD didn't work, and will never buy their music again, in any form. Or they believe that the CD player is broken, because the disc worked in a different player.

Also, bad as DRM is, most people actually don't have trouble with it.

Where is the catch?

[giladpn]

Lets all look around us; people who read books have not moved en-masse to e-books. So how come Amazon is announcing sales of e-books have surpassed regular books?

There is a trendiness effect. People who usually do NOT read books may still buy an e-book reader for someone else... esepcially on official toy-giving day a.k.a xmas.

Sure, eventually e-book readers make sense and will replace paper. I'm just saying that day is not now.

In fact, by the time e-book readers replace paper, they may look like paper themselves. There is a tech trend towards computers that are as thin as a sheet of paper...

Personally I like paper, so I will buy an e-book when it catches up and becomes as thin as paper. Not long to wait - a year or three.

Re:Where is the catch?

[tgd]

Depends where you are, and the type of reader crowd you are talking about.

I've been in cafes where the ratio of Kindle to print readers was easily 2:1, and probably higher. If you travel a lot on business, the numbers are clearly through the roof on flights. That makes sense -- lugging books on business trips is just lousy.

What Amazon has said repeatedly is among the demographic that tends to buy a lot of books, the Kindle is taking over. Its telling when they can release numbers showing that 1/3 of their sales of books where electronic copies are available are electronic.

Nothing in the article suggests its replacing paper now, they're just saying for the first time they sold more ebooks than real books on a day, regardless of the reason. Thats still a significant step.

Re:Price is the problem.

[n0dna]

That's my point exactly.

If the physical paperback is $7, why is the ebook $10?

Yeah, it's only a couple of bucks, but if the ebooks actually cost $3 more apiece to produce, I'll eat my hat.

 

Re:public insanity?

[ObjetDart]

I guess I'll wade in here with a perspective. I'm someone who has been violently opposed to any DRM in my music files, and never bought a single track from iTunes in my life. I'm also a Kindle owner who happily buys DRM'd books from Amazon all the time. How can this be?

The difference I guess is how I want to consume the two different types of media. I want to be able to play my music again and again, now, and 20 years from now, in my car, on my media player, on my 4 different PCs, and on my living room stereo. DRM basically makes this impossible, or so convoluted as to be impractical.

OTOH, I only want to read a book once. The only place that I want to read my eBook is on my Kindle. I buy a Kindle book, I read it on the Kindle, and I'm done with it. That fact that it's DRM'd never affects me. I don't care that I can't loan it or resell it later, these are just not big concerns for me. I'm willing to give up those things in exchange for the convenience of a lightweight electronic reader.

I'm also aware that Amazon has no choice, just as Apple had no choice when they first introduced iTunes. The DRM requirement is being driven by the publishers. If Amazon wants to get the big publishers on board today, there must be some kind of copy protection in place to satisfy the dinosaurs. Over time, I suspect this will change, just as it did with iTunes.

Re:It's not the Kindle

[nightgeometry]

This is pretty much obviously not true. If it were then they would sell ebooks in a format that any other reader could use (pretty much ePub, at this point).

They don't, they use a proprietary format that no one else is able to use. Thus I assume that they are not *just* after selling electronic copies of books.

I don't remember the exact time line that the Kindle was released. I think that Sony hadn't yet started to move to ePub, and nor had many others. In which case they should have stuck to ereader or mobipocket. They even own one of those (I always forget which),