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

[raygundan]

I've been having the exact opposite experience. I don't have a kindle, but I use their app on my phone, and have for quite a while now. But in the last year, every time I go to buy a Kindle book, it's ~$15, and the hardcover version is $3.99 shipped. Or it's not available on the Kindle at all. Most recently, this was the case with three Iain M. Banks novels-- two shipped from the UK, and they were still only a couple dollars apiece, in hardcover.

This isn't Amazon's fault-- the publishers won their fight to set pricing. And they're pricing themselves right out of a sale. When the Kindle was new and ebooks were almost always cheaper than printed books, I bought quite a few. Now I'm buying books used again. The publishers have cut off their nose to spite their face, and in their fear of low-margin ebooks have lost their margin entirely.

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

[MozeeToby]

I don't think he's saying ebooks are cheaper in a general sense, he's saying that cheap ebooks are outselling the more expensive ebooks, which is what is skewing the results. I know I would never go to the bookstore (or even the library) to get a short story and very rarely a novelette, but I've gotten several on my Kindle because the price was right ( $1 ) and their customer ratings were high. So yeah, the Kindle does change my reading material, but that's because A) I refuse to pay $10+ for the ebook edition of a book B) I also refuse to buy a physical copy of a book (yeah, I know blasphemy, whatever. I significantly prefer the convenience of ebooks over paper). And that leaves me with a very different group of books that are in my acceptable price range.

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.

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.

I know I'm skewing the results

[nani popoki]

I'm a recent Kindle (Keyboard and Fire) owner. I probably spend US$50 a month on books. Over the years, I've accumulate a collection large enough to make me worry about how much floor loading my attic can stand. So having new books reduced to bits seems attractive. And the Kindle is often just easier to work with since I can adjust the print size to suit my vision comfort. Since I got my Kindle Keyboard (in August), I've downloaded and read about 100 titles. Not all of them were novel-length; I'd say on average the "book" was more like novella-length.

Also, I find myself buying eBooks that I'd probably not buy as pBooks (physical books), partly because they're cheaper and partly because they are impulse buys -- it takes me a few seconds to get a book over the internet and about two hours to drive to the nearest bookstore, buy a book and drive home. I found half a dozen authors I now buy regularly that I probably never would be reading if I'd had time to second-guess the "hmm... that looks interesting" reaction.

Re:REAMDE

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just buying it for the collector value.
See, I know how these things work. First editions with a misprint in the title always end up being worth thousands.

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.

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.