eBooks Nearly Outsell Print Books At Amazon

destinyland writes "Thursday Amazon.com announced that they're selling more ebooks than paperback books — and three times as many ebooks as hardcovers. If you combine their statistics into a pie chart, it shows that 45% of all the books Amazon sells are now ebooks. And Amazon's statistic doesn't include all the free ebooks people are downloading to their Kindles, so if just one user downloads a free ebook for every nine paid ebook purchases — then Amazon is already delivering more digital ebooks than they are print editions." Another reader tips an interview with Brian Altounian, CEO of ebook marketplace WOWIO, in which he discusses an encroaching feature that ebook aficionados love to hate: ads.

Comments

I will accept ads

[denshao2]

if the books are free.

Re:I will accept ads

[Obyron]

And I'll never buy another eBook the first time I see an ad in one. We balance out. Books are about immersion, and having ads will ruin it for me.

Re:I will accept ads

[InlawBiker]

The answer is of course, product placement in-line with the text. They could do this pretty easily on the back end of many books automatically.

"... all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as he opened forth his Pepsi-Cola, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it."

Re:I will accept ads

[macshit]

And I'll never buy another eBook the first time I see an ad in one. We balance out. Books are about immersion, and having ads will ruin it for me.

It seems like it depends critically on the presentation and content of the ads.

Many (physical) paperbacks I buy have little fall-out inserts advertising other releases by the same publisher, book clubs, etc. I don't mind these -- I glance them, sometimes read them, usually toss them out (though the mini-catalogues of other books are actually useful enough to keep in some cases). They're easily ignored, not in my face, often informative, and topical.

Ebook adverts with these same properties wouldn't be too objectionable I think.

OTOH, I imagine the likelihood of ebook publishers not screwing it up is very low -- there's this weird idea amongst publishing entities (not just books but movies, music, etc) that any change of medium means that all the rules change, that any and all conventions and lessons learned from the old medium should be tossed out, and that the new medium is carte blanche to viciously ream the consumer while bleeding him dry.

One would hope that consumers (and regulators, where appropriate) would disabuse publishers of this notion...

Keep in mind

[c0d3g33k]

That Amazon does not represent the entire book market - they sell to a subset of customers that don't mind getting their books online. The fact that a significant portion of those customers are equally happy with ebooks isn't exactly a revelation. There are still a lot of people out there who prefer to buy real books, whether or not the big bookstores are catering to them.

Re:Kindle owner

[rudy_wayne]

As long as the Kindle has the ability to remotely delete books, they can go fuck themself.

Re:the ebook ripoff

[QCompson]

As I understand it, soon after the ipad was introduced, most book publishers renegotiated their contract with amazon and B&N. The retail chains had acted previously like a normal brick and mortar store and could set their own prices for ebooks, but after the renegotiation they switched to the "agency model" which lets the publisher set the price. Amazon and B&N have no control over ebook prices now, they only receive a certain percentage of the profits.

As a result, prices skyrocketed nearly overnight. The last 4 or 5 books I have been interested in buying have been more expensive as ebooks than in hardover or paperback form. So yes, it is a complete ripoff. Especially since you don't really own the ebooks you purchase and cannot lend them easily or sell them.

Re:Same phenomenon as the mobile app market

[mattmarlowe]

Unfortunately, amazon caved into the demands of the large publishers and is now allowing publishers to set prices. Naturally, the publishers have started to test having ebook prices of popular new releases actually be $1-2 higher than the equivalent hardcover and after the release has been out awhile reduce the ebook price to be just the same as paperback. So, in effect we move from the situation a year ago where kindle readers were receiving a discount on books and publishers could complain that the future of publishing was in peril - we now have a situation where kindle readers are being pushed as an extra money maker - kindle readers are paying a premium for fast access to books above and beyond the cost of the kindle itself. Somewhat of an interesting situation where if a kindle owner has an amazon prime account, he is actually paying amazon extra not to kill a tree and burn additional energy to send him the physical copy.

Re:This is a tragedy.

[icebike]

Every single thing you said is false in the digital world.

Its not a common place for people to learn. Library patronage is falling fast.

Its no longer needed for a literate society. We have thousands of book stores, the Internet, and millions of totally free ebooks.

Finding new authors? ---> Google.

Enhances sales? Suppresses sales you mean.

And libraries deprive authors of thousands of royalties.

So wrong on 100% of your points. A case can be made that libraries in the digital age serve precisely one purpose, and that is to assure continued availability of works unpopular with the State or the Church or the general times.

Its an unpopular view, but never the less, libraries have largely outlived their general usefulness.

Re:Same phenomenon as the mobile app market

[commodore6502]

You can ship books via media mail at $3.24 or if the book is light, first class for $2. Plus whatever delivery confirmation costs.

licensing, not buying

[seifried]

You are licensing the eBook. Not buying it.

Amazon recalls (and embodies) Orwell's '1984'

Re:the ebook ripoff

[ErikZ]

Welcome to capitalism.

Buy things you think are worth the price, don't buy things you don't. The market will respond.

As for me, I agree with you 100% and I've been a Kindle owner for years now. This has lead me down the path of trying new Authors who are trying to build a name for themselves. They do it by offering lower priced books, or even giving away the first book in a series.

It's been great!

Re:the ebook ripoff

[noidentity]

Also, let's correct this quote in the summary: "they're selling more ebook licenses than paperback books". Give me a real book I can lend/sell/give away.

E-Calibre?

[willynate]

I'm just curious why no one has mentioned e-calibre (http://calibre-ebook.com/) as a great tool for essentially removing the DRM from Amazon books. Just suck your .amz or .mobi books off your Kindle and convert them to .epub and back. A buddy and me have permenantly "loaned" each other copies of several books we bought off Amazon in this manner.