Amazon has announced that their customers are now buying more Kindle books than all print books – hardcover and paperback – combined.
The rise of the Kindle has been hugely impressive. Launched in November 2007, Kindle book sales swept past those of hardcover book sales by July 2010, and just six months later, they started outselling paperback books too.
The latest announcement sees beloved paper book sales being overshadowed by Kindle books as electronic book downloads now surpass the total of hardcover and paperback books added together.
Quicker than expected
“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,” purred Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO, Amazon.com.
“In addition, we’re excited by the response to Kindle with Special Offers for only $114, which has quickly become the bestselling member of the Kindle family.
We continue to receive positive comments from customers on the low $114 price and the money-saving special offers. We’re grateful to our customers for continuing to make Kindle the bestselling e-reader in the world and the Kindle Store the most popular e-bookstore in the world.”
Clearly well chuffed with their success, Amazon have compiled a list of recent milestones for their Kindle ebook reader:
Since April 1, for every 100 print books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 105 Kindle books. This includes sales of hardcover and paperback books by Amazon where there is no Kindle edition. Free Kindle books are excluded and if included would make the number even higher. So far in 2011, the tremendous growth of Kindle book sales, combined with the continued growth in Amazon’s print book sales, have resulted in the fastest year-over-year growth rate for Amazon’s U.S. books business, in both units and dollars, in over 10 years. This includes books in all formats, print and digital. Free books are excluded in the calculation of growth rates. In the five weeks since its introduction, Kindle with Special Offers for only $114 is already the bestselling member of the Kindle family in the U.S. Amazon sold more than 3x as many Kindle books so far in 2011 as it did during the same period in 2010. Less than one year after introducing the UK Kindle Store, Amazon.co.uk is now selling more Kindle books than hardcover books, even as hardcover sales continue to grow. Since April 1, Amazon.co.uk customers are purchasing Kindle books over hardcover books at a rate of more than 2 to 1.
Amazon now claims to offer the largest selection of the most popular books people want to read, with their US store serving up more than 950,000 books, with the majority (790,000) available for $9.99 or less.
Readers can also help themselves to millions of free, out-of-copyright, pre-1923 books. And to paraphrase Cilla one more time, that’s a lorra, lorra ebooks.
Bag yourself a Kindle on Amazon:
