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eBook Sales Outpace Hardbacks

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the sell-harder-son dept.

dptalia writes "Amazon announced that for every 100 hardback books they sell, 180 eBooks are sold. In addition, they've seen sales for Kindles triple since they lowered the price. But traditionalists shouldn't panic yet — paperbacks are still the king."

5 of 247 comments (clear)

  1. love it by Lord+Ender · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I love my Kindle. I buy about one book per week. It's gotten to the point where if a book I'm looking for isn't available in ebook format, I simply don't buy that book. I want my entire library available to me anywhere I go. I don't want to haul around dead trees.

    The publishers who haven't released their books in ebook format are simply daft.

    --
    A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
    1. Re:love it by pvera · · Score: 4, Interesting

      We got two Kindles here, it is just too convenient to have the books available anywhere. With two of us in the house reading so much, we already had one wall covered with bookshelves and it was starting to get out of control (those things are dust magnets). Now all of our purchased eBooks are kept in a convenient location, we don't even have to worry about losing a book because the device fails.

      Even if I forget the Kindle when I leave the house, I can use the Blackberry client and pull whatever I was reading. The flexibility I get outweighs any concern I may have had about DRM and lock-in.

      --
      Pedro
      ----
      The Insomniac Coder
    2. Re:love it by N7DR · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The publishers who haven't released their books in ebook format are simply daft.

      Or possibly they have read the contract that Amazon requires them to agree to in order to put content on their devices, and decided that giving all the rights to Amazon is not something that they want to do (I exaggerate, but not by a whole lot; basically the publisher gives up essentially all control of the presentation and distribution). Perhaps they are careful rather than daft.

  2. Natural fit for travelers by Lifyre · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is not at all surprising especially for travelers or those who have limited space but like to read many books. As military my PRS-505 allowed me to bring and entire library with me for the size of a small notepad to Iraq as opposed to a half dozen books. The reading experience was close enough to reading a paperback that it isn't worth mentioning except for a few purists.

    The picture viewing and manga reading was also sublime. To me the pictures while grayscale looked like they could have been pencil drawn and were easily readable.

    The ONLY downside I found was the screen refresh but it wasn't much more than turning a page and easily adapted to.

    --
    I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
  3. Re:You cant hand an ebook to your friend... by fredjh · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I have two Nooks... believe me, I did not buy them for the "lend" feature, which is nearly pointless in it's implementation...

    SOME publishers "allow" some books to be lent... ONE TIME ONLY, and ONLY for fourteen days. After that, you can not lend it anymore.

    By buying into e-books (which I've done, I had my reasons why I ultimately thought it was a good way to go), you are removing any right to resale/donate you have with other books.

    Because of this fact, cost of books should not enter the equation for determining whether to buy an e-book reader or not... most of the paperbacks I looked into cost less than a dollar more than the e-book version, and you didn't give up your rights.

    --
    Stupid, sexy Flanders.