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E-Books Are Only 6% of Printed Book Sales
An anonymous reader writes "MIT's technology blog argues that e-book sales represent 'only six pecent of the total market for new books.' It cites a business analysis which calculates that by mid-July, Amazon had sold 15.6 million hardcover books versus 22 million e-books, but with sales of about 48 million more paperback books. Amazon recently announced they sell 180 e-books for every 100 hardcover books, but when paperbacks are counted, e-books represent just 29.3% of all Amazon's book sales. And while Amazon holds about 19% of the book market, they currently represent 90% of all e-book sales — suggesting that e-books represent a tiny fraction of all print books sold. 'Many tech pundit wants books to die,' argues MIT's Christopher Mims, citing the head of Microsoft's ClearType team, who says 'I'd be glad to ditch thousands of paper- and hard-backed books from my bookshelves. I'd rather have them all on an iPad.' But while Nicholas Negroponte predicts the death of the book within five years, Mims argues that 'it's just as likely that as the ranks of the early adopters get saturated, adoption of e-books will slow.'"
The problem is that you're not enough of a sucker.
The problem is that you are too much of a Luddite to rationally & honestly consider the advantages that e-books have to paper books. Most probably because you seem to be under impression that e-books == "DRM'ed e-books".
Imagine, 50 years from now, a kid goes up to the attic and sees a Kindle with a cracked screen, broken navigation keys, and a dead battery. It is junk. Imagine the same kid in the attic uncovering boxes full of books, dozens of them, with pictures, diagrams, stories, plans, photos, etc. Which is the better outcome?
What about the costs and inconvenience of storing and transporting all those boxes full of books for 50 years?
I suppose you also print all your digital photos? As backup strategy for your children & grandchildren? "I will carry and store all these boxes full of printouts for the next 50 years, so that a kid can discover them in a attic"??
I've moved about 4 times in the last 10 years, when my wife moved in with me, she brought several boxes of books that were in a box since the last time she had moved...
Not everyone lives in suburban USA to have an attic to store all the "stuff" (i.e. trash) you don't use, don't need, but won't throw away.
We have to remember that it is possible that, in the current market, due to markup costs, eBooks may be selling for less than they cost per unit.
That's totally illogical, Spock. How can a download cost more to distribute than a physical item that has to be printed, warehoused, and shipped, with all the associated labor and equipment costs?
If we sell one eBook for $5 million but it gets copied electronically so that we make no other sales
If pigs had wings they'd fly. The thing is, your premise is not only flawed, but completely backwards. Rather than decreasing sales, piracy increases sales, as one publisher found out when he commissioned a study to see how piracy affected sales and found that there was actually a sales spike when the book hit the internet.
And to say that you sold ONE ebook for five MILLION dollars and lost money because you sold no more books is so ludicrous I have to think that you're having a brain embolism, or just trolling. Your post makes no sense at all.
To Quote the Nobel winning physicist George Smoot, "With all due respects, Dr. Cooper, are you on crack?"
Free Martian Whores!
Sorry, but I don't think I'd want to read a book written by someone who doesn't use his shift key.
Free Martian Whores!