Amazon: Kindle titles outpacing hardcovers (Dinosaur Media DeathWatch™)

CNET News ^ | July 19, 2010 | Caroline McCarthy

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The Amazon.com Kindle e-reader and bookstore have reached a "tipping point," the company said Monday, with Kindle titles outselling hardcover books on the massive online marketplace for the first time.

"We've reached a tipping point with the new price of Kindle--the growth rate of Kindle device unit sales has tripled since we lowered the price from $259 to $189," Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said in an announcement release, referring to last month's price drop for the device. "In addition, even while our hardcover sales continue to grow, the Kindle format has now overtaken the hardcover format. Amazon.com customers now purchase more Kindle books than hardcover books--astonishing, when you consider that we've been selling hardcover books for 15 years and Kindle books for 33 months."

And Kindle titles continue to outpace hardcovers, statistics from Amazon showed. In the past three months, 143 Kindle books were sold for every 100 hardcovers, but when that time frame is narrowed to a month, it's 180 Kindle books for every 100 hardcovers. Total e-book sales tripled from the first half of 2009 to the first half of 2010.

This comes despite months' worth of claims of naysayers who speculated that Apple's sophisticated iPad might render obsolete e-readers like the Kindle. But with prices higher in Apple's iBooks store than for many Kindle titles, and a Kindle app available for both the iPad and iPhone, the supposed death of the Kindle seems far less imminent. Some have even surmised that the discrepancies between the devices may play to Amazon's hand rather than Apple's.

Amazon is slated to announce its second-quarter earnings on Thursday, and analysts are speculating that it'll post an extremely strong quarter.

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Of interest to our group

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ping

[green iguana]

Books are dinosaur media?

[Mr. K]

Maybe we can get Stephen King to finish “The Plant” now!

(it was a fun read)

[chris37]

I can understand this. Anytime I go into a local store to find a good novel to read, I can’t, because 90% of the shelf space is taken up by romance novels.

[Carley]

Family and friends share lots of books with each other.

The Kindle would put an end to that.

[equalitybeforethelaw]

Got mine for Father’s day. No more carrying two or three books on travel, just one slim Kindle. Love it. BTW, the cost of the books is less than half of the published price. Fits in your coat pocket.

[magritte]

I wonder if they are comparing apples and apples on this...for every 100 hardcover copies of the new James Lee Burke, they are selling 143 e-books?...seems unlikely...magritte

[discostu]

Of course by limiting to vs hardcovers they’re missing 80% of the sales volume. Paperbacks are still what make the industry go round, publishers and stores love the price and profit margin of hardbacks, but for readers they tend to only buy hardbacks for favorite authors.

[Aggie Mama]

I have a Nook (Barnes and Noble’s brand) and has a “Lend Me” function that allows for book sharing.

[GonzoGOP]

Also project Gutenberg is putting out books that are in the public domain. A lot of the great 1950's and 1960's sci-fi magazines are now available for free in Kindle format. I find them a lot of fun to see what people 50 years ago thought the world would be like today. Traveling to Mars on rocket ships, but still using a slide rule for navigation.

Also there are more serious books from classic works of fiction to historical books written soon after the events. The 1898 book "The River War" by Sir Winston Churchill was a particularly good read. Since when written none of the people involved had become famous yet. However many of the lieutenants and majors mentioned will later become the generals and admirals who will lead Britain in the first world war. And of course Churchill had rather an impressive future ahead of him as well.

[discostu]

Romance is the license to print money genre. As much as those of us who don’t read it like to scoff at it, romance sales are crazy, can blame the stores for stocking what people buy.

[equalitybeforethelaw]

Of course by limiting to vs hardcovers they’re missing 80% of the sales volume. Paperbacks are still what make the industry go round, publishers and stores love the price and profit margin of hardbacks, but for readers they tend to only buy hardbacks for favorite authors.

They have pretty much what ever you want to read, old and new. Further, they have all the classics available for free or for about $.75. If its not in Kindle format, just request it. The great thing is you can download pretty much anywhere (books, magazines, newspapers) and are not required to pay a monthly internet fee (like the IPAD). Wonderful technology. Not good for pictures though.

[CA Conservative]

“Family and friends share lots of books with each other.

The Kindle would put an end to that.”

That is one reason I got a Nook (from Barnes and Noble). If you buy an e-book from B&N you can “lend” it to another person for up to 14 days. Another reason is that I can buy e-books from other eReader sellers like Sony and upload them onto my Nook, and I can share those books with others as well.

[ElkGroveDan]

The problem with this statistic is that the “number of titles” includes self-published “books” that Amazon facilitates for the Kindle (My Life as an Indianapolis Fry Cook). Now if they were to show the count of titles that are also in physical print, and then compare the electronic vs. print sales then you’d see a different story.

[abb]

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[Vinnie]

My wife and I both read a lot.But..

We usually get the paperback version, read it, change hands, take it to the used book store and trade.

Very few books do I want to read more than once.
Then why have a bunch of books on a Kindle/Nook or whatever.

When they rent them for 30 days for around $5 with an option to buy count me in.

[matt1234]

Great until a societal collapse and the electrity goes out and the batteries die.

[Carley]

So the other person has to buy a Nook too?

Between the two of us we would have spent hundreds of dollars, yes?

[abb]

Books are dinosaur media?

I think a good argument could be made that they indeed are just that.