The Kindle Skews Amazon's 2011 Best-Seller List

destinyland writes "Amazon's released their list of 2011's best-selling books, revealing that 40% of the best-selling ebooks didn't even make it onto their list of the best-selling print books. The #1 and #2 best-selling ebooks of the year weren't even available in print editions, while four of the top 10 best-selling print books didn't make it into the top 100 best-selling ebooks. 'It couldn't be more clear that Kindle owners are choosing their material from an entirely different universe of books,' notes one Kindle site, which points out that five of the best-selling ebooks came from two million-selling ebook authors — Amanda Hocking and John Locke — who are still awaiting the release of their books in print. And five of Amazon's best-selling ebooks were Kindle-only 'Singles,' including a Stephen King short story which actually outsold another King novel that he'd released in both ebook and print formats. And Neal Stephenson's 'Reamde' was Amazon's #99 best-selling print book of 2011, though it didn't even make it onto their list of the 100 best-selling ebooks of the year. 'People who own Kindles are just reading different books than the people who buy printed books,' reports the Kindle site, which adds '2011 may be remembered as the year that hundreds of new voices finally found their audiences.'"

Comments

Hardly a fair comparison

[elrous0]

The eBooks on that list ranged from $1-$3 (no shipping of course), whereas the print books ranged from $8-$15 (plus shipping). All other things being equal, of course the eBooks are going to outsell the print ones at those prices.

Hell, the cheaper prices and not having to pay shipping is why a lot of people buy Kindles in the first place. Not to sound like an ad here, but Kindle versions usually run anywhere from $5-$10 cheaper than their print counterparts, you get them right away, and there is no $4 extra for shipping.

Re:Hardly a fair comparison

[Yvan256]

He's talking about 1-3$ books and you're talking about 25$ orders. Do you really think people buy 20+ books per order?

The shipping cost is a factor, the delay to receive your books is another. FedEx, UPS or DHL, I don't care which carrier you choose, they can't beat "I'll start reading in 60 seconds".

Re:Hardly a fair comparison

[PopeAlien]

"with Amazon prime or a $25 order, shipping is free"

So you're saying for a little more money I can buy 'free' shipping?

Re:Hardly a fair comparison

[nine-times]

The publishers have cut off their nose to spite their face, and in their fear of low-margin ebooks have lost their margin entirely.

It's not exactly that they cut off their nose to spite their face. To some extent, what's going on with ebooks is the same thing that's happening in movies/television, which is the same thing that happened in Music a few years ago. Publishers can see that their business may move more and more into digital downloads, and they don't want to miss the boat, so they're getting involved in that arena. However, they prefer to keep their old business model because they understand it, it's predictable, and it's profitable. To some extent, they therefore want their own business ventures in digital streaming/downloads to fail, and they sabotage these ventures.

Now I'm not convinced that they are literally consciously thinking, "I want this venture to fail." However, they aren't approaching it from the standpoint of "This is the future of my business and I must make it succeed," either. It's a little more like, "Ok, well we have to do this, and I don't trust it, so let's just throw this sloppy attempt out there and see what happens. But let's make sure we aren't cannibalizing our other sales."

Re:Hardly a fair comparison

[raygundan]

Look at REAMDE, cited in the article. $14.90 new in hardcover from the amazon marketplace and $14.99 for the Kindle edition. It's a new release, and it's about the same cost new, in hardcover, as it is for the Kindle. And that's before we mention getting some of your money back selling it used.

Re:Hardly a fair comparison

[icebike]

Three dollars, eight dollars, you guys are both missing the point.

People buy cheaper books on Kindles and Nooks BECAUSE THEY CAN.

Nobody will print a three dollar book for long, and fewer book stores will stock it, and even Amazon does not carry it for long due to the cost of warehouse space. These inexpensive books from new authors or older titles from known authors simply disappear from the market in printed form.

But these books can remain in ebook form forever, taking up on average half of a floppy disk work of computer storage someplace in the Amazon cloud/

Then there is the whole issue of residual value, which has been thrashed about on Slashdot in the past. You can sell your paper books, donate them to libraries, or what ever. But the publishers (with Amazon and Barnes and Noble's reluctant acquiescence) have circumvented the first sale doctrine and essentially limited your ownership rights to digital books.

This is being looked into (a year too late) by the DOJ and the EU but action is probably far off.

While that percolates, people are less apt to pay full price for a book they can't own. The market is slowly realizing this and placing a value on that residual ownership as people hold off buying this year's best sellers while they read last year's best sellers. The net result is a lower price that people are willing to pay for a damaged title. (see what I did there?).

Re:Hardly a fair comparison

[Schlemphfer]

To me, the biggest advantage to owning the Kindle edition isn't anything you've written. It's that, when I purchase the Kindle edition, it's one less item I need to keep in my house, tote the next time I move, and ultimately get rid of.

On top of that, it's environmentally the right thing to do—one less book that needs to be manufactured and shipped somewhere.

And don't even get me started on how great the highlighting feature is, where you can underline and automatically collect key passages without defacing your book. It's changed how I read.

I personally refuse to buy books from publishers who price their Kindle books higher than the discounted paperback price. If they don't want to embrace where the publishing world is headed, then screw 'em.

Re:Hardly a fair comparison

[ILongForDarkness]

The authors probably made more per sale on the $1-3 books than the ones that sold the $25 real books through a normal publisher too. So everyone wins but the publishers. Authors get more fans, more money, customers pay less I suspect people read more etc. I realize there is a selection bias towards people that would pay ~$100 for something to read books are likely to be people that read a lot of books but I think it goes both ways. I used to read a lot, slowed down, but bought a kindle a few years ago and now read way more again and more varied things because I don't necessarily have to pay oddles to try something different that wouldn't be popular enough to be in the library. Much less of a hassle. I literally was getting to the point where the libraries in my town didn't have any more books I was interested in reading. Now I can download whatever I want, I'm not limited to what is in the local book store/library can "acquire" just about anything so cost isn't an issue etc.

Re:Hardly a fair comparison

[tricorn]

The problem is that they're trying to sell the "print" books for only a slight discount as an e-book.

So you end up with two completely separate sets of books: overpriced e-books, so not very many sales in that format compared to print format; and inexpensive e-books that aren't even available in print because they figure it isn't worth printing them. Of course you're going to get completely different titles selling in the two formats.

I'd get Reamde for Nook but it's too expensive. I'd pay maybe $4-5 at most for something that I can't re-sell and is tied to a device that may not be available in a few years, locked to a company that may go out of business some day. In 50 years, will I be able to pull out my copy of it and say "oh yeah, that was a fun read, maybe I'll read it again." ... ? But they want $15 for it. No way.

marketing

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you really trust a list made by a company that wants everyone to think that the e-version is the way to go. To be fair there should be two lists. One for ebooks and one for hardback. Mixing them together trying to confuse the issue to make it seem like there e-products are better or the way to go is a sham in the sense it that it is bad marketing to not try to sale people on their other products.

Re:What about non-price factors skewing the lists?

[imthesponge]

Honestly, nobody cares.

Idiotic Publishers

[Xebikr]

The reason ebook only books sell better is because they are priced in line with the market for ebooks. The market is clear that the correct price for a bunch of bits that make an ebook is up to ~$4. The traditional publishers are trying to use their monopoly to enforce a dead tree price on a bunch of electrons, and they are being outsold by less rigid authors who want to make money, not maintain control.

Re:Idiotic Publishers

[Xebikr]

Kind of my point. Publishers seem to be terrified of the popularity of ebooks, so they look to make them as unappealing as possible. Price of a product with no shipping, no inventory, and no materials cost is more expensive than the print ones? That stinks of market manipulation and tells me they really don't want ebooks to succeed. Meanwhile, many self-published authors are making bank on an often inferior product because they sell at a reasonable price. Seriously. Publishers need to give customers what they want at a fair price. I think they'd be surprised how much money they'd make.

It's like popcorn

[alexander_686]

It's free to you - but not to Amazon.

Amazon's business model would collapse if they had to physical ship $1 dollar books and absorb the shipping. On the other hand, it can work with electronic delivery.

That being said, a lot of the “books” being suggested are actually short stories. It’s a format I love but few people do it because there small so they can’t make money off of them – or is that changing? In any event, I would pay a dollar or two for popcorn books, but if I pay big bucks (over $5) it had better be a big, luxuries meal that will take some time to savory.

Also, did anybody else notice the self published books?

It’s not that Kindle readers are reading different kind of books, but the e-readers allow readers to buy different types of books.