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Amazon Sells More Ebooks On Christmas Than Real Books

Posted by Soulskill on from the takes-way-more-to-stuff-a-stocking-though dept.

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.

2 of 111 comments (clear)

  1. Greedy publishers by vvaduva · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

  2. Re:Where is the catch? by tgd · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.