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Ebooks Now Outselling Print Books At Amazon

Posted by Soulskill on from the trees-everywhere-celebrate dept.

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from CNN: "As further proof of how digital media dominate today's entertainment, Amazon announced Thursday that its customers now buy more e-books for its Kindle device than all print books — hardcover and paperback — combined. Given that people seem to spend more and more of their time peering at glowing electronic screens, this was probably bound to happen. Still, the swiftness of this sea change — three-and-a-half years after the Kindle hit the market — appeared to catch even Amazon by surprise. 'Customers are now choosing Kindle books more often than print books. We had high hopes that this would happen eventually, but we never imagined it would happen this quickly — we've been selling print books for 15 years and Kindle books for less than four years,' said Jeff Bezos, Amazon's CEO, in a statement."

8 of 207 comments (clear)

  1. Used Book Prices Are Plummeting by crow_t_robot · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I bought a Kindle but now I find myself exclusively buying used paper because it's waaayy cheaper (many books below $1, some $.01) and I can take the used book to the bookstore and get turn-in value which I can use to buy more books.

    1. Re:Used Book Prices Are Plummeting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      I'm currently part-way through five books.

      I used to do that but I kept mixing up the content. For example, after reading all the books the concepts and information would mix together so I would think I learned about the "Quantum mating habits of hedge fund computers in C++" - I only read one book at a time now.

    2. Re:Used Book Prices Are Plummeting by Ferzerp · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Kindle pricing was really nice prior to Apple getting involved and the resulting publisher price fixing.

      Nothing like used, but it was much better than it is now. I'm not so sure that I would have gone that route if the pricing were as it stands currently.

    3. Re:Used Book Prices Are Plummeting by TheRaven64 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Since I moved house, there are two charity shops within about 2 minutes walk that sell books for under 50p each. At this price, they're impulse purchases, and at least one of them usually has something that looks interesting (often they have sets of things, so I can pick up half a dozen books by the same author and have a couple of weeks worth of reading material). It's a fairly limited selection, but I find I prefer that (see 'the paradox of choice'), because filtering something the size of Amazon's range for things I might want to read is a huge task, and their recommendations are useless.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  2. And Oh the Formats to Support! by eldavojohn · · Score: 4, Informative
    From the article:

    Consumers wanting to read books electronically can now choose from many competing devices, including Sony's Reader, Barnes & Noble's Nook, and a variety of touchscreen tablets, including Apple's iPad.

    They make it sound so easy and effortless! But they fail to address the matrix of which service and format is support/authorized for which device. You can blame it on DRM or competitor lockout greed or whatever but it's still a major inhibitor in my mind.

    --
    My work here is dung.
    1. Re:And Oh the Formats to Support! by RobotRunAmok · · Score: 5, Interesting

      they fail to address the matrix of which service and format is support/authorized for which device

      Matrix, schmatrix.

      Calibre finds, downloads, converts, views, organizes, tweaks, and edits just about every kind of digital book from/into just about every format. And it's free.

  3. Re:What about free books? by perlwhiz · · Score: 5, Informative

    From the Amazon press release:
    "Free Kindle books are excluded and if included would make the number even higher."

  4. Re:Could that be a lie? Or, is Amazon not doing we by Serious+Callers+Only · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Two months later I have been completely converted to the Kindle. I now don't even bother looking at books that I can't buy on the Kindle. It kind of sucks, as a lot of publishers charge a premium on Kindle books (how the hell do they justify that???), and other books simply are not available. But the convenience of reading on a Kindle trumps the disadvantages for me.

    Q: How the hell do they justify that???
    A: But the convenience of reading on a Kindle trumps the disadvantages for me

    If the convenience was worth less to you than the price difference, you'd buy the paper version.