[kennyc]

Amazon says Kindle ebook sales have overtaken print

For every 100 hardback and paperback book sold in UK, 114 ebooks are downloaded in 'reading renaissance'

A woman reading a Kindle ebook on a London bus. Amazon says downloads have overtaken print sales
A woman reading a Kindle ebook on a London bus. Amazon.co.uk says downloads have overtaken print book sales. Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian

Amazon.co.uk has said that sales of its Kindle ebooks are now outstripping those of printed books.

Underlining the speed of change in the publishing industry, Amazon said that two years after introducing the Kindle, customers are now buying more ebooks than all hardcovers and paperbacks combined. According to unaudited figures released by the company on Monday, since the start of 2012, for every 100 hardback and paperback book sold on its site, customers downloaded 114 ebooks. Amazon said the figures included sales of printed books which did not have Kindle editions, but excluded free ebooks.

In a surprise move in May, the company went into partnership with the UK's largest bricks-and-mortar books retailer, Waterstones.

Much to the consternation of the publishing industry, Amazon has refused to release audited figures for its digital book sales, something it does for printed books. It told the Guardian that the company would not discuss future policy on the matter.

The company said its figures also showed that British Kindle users were buying four times as many books as they were prior to owning a Kindle, a trend it described as a renaissance of reading.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012...?newsfeed=true