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.'"

Comments

Re:eBook pricing

[BLKMGK]

They WERE lower and then Apple cut a deal with the publishers to allow the PUBLISHERS, not the retailers, to set pricing. They then beat Amazon over the head with this deal and forced Amazon to capitulate. Overnight book prices for E-books in many cases were changed to be HIGHER than hardcover sale prices. The publishers tell you this is a deal though because it's still lower than hardcover LIST prices - who buys at list?! Retailers still set those prices! Want to know when you're getting boned by a publisher? Look for "This price was set by the publisher" on the sales entry.

When this occurred I went from buying multiple books a month to torrenting them - I haven't bought anything other than a Sci-Fi subscription to a magazine in MONTHS as a result of this bullshit. When they bring back $9.99 pricing I'll start buying, until then - fuck 'em. I can't resell, trade, or give away an e-book like I can paper. I no longer want paper books in my home either - I have too many as it is! grrrr!

Or maybe they are using hollywood accounting.

[DCFusor]

A while back, I wrote a book, Digital Audio Processing (Doug Coulter). Recently, Amazon has it as ebook form, perhaps without even informing my publisher, and certainly without telling me. It would stink without the code I copy-lefted on the CD that came with the paperback anyway. Though they sanitized the book of any way to contact me, my email address is all over that code which they didn't check. I've gotten emails from unique addresses in the ratio of about 20::1 over the sales my publisher claims. They are cheating, no question. Next time I will self publish and sell off my own forum or something, no point feeding those dishonest jerks any more. I now understand why Frank Zappa had such a hard-on about that whole business. They have reported zero e-book sales, but it's up there cheap. Pretty worthless without the nice code though, and I don't see how you get that off an e-book reader and into compilation, so it's a joke all around. At any rate, they make the RIAA look honest....just my $.02 worth, which is more than they've paid me after the advance. My opinion of those guys is unprintable, so I'll quit now.