Amazon

[jbcohen]

A little dated but thought mobile read members would like to know, my source is wired.com:

E-books have hit the mainstream, and for the first time are consistently outselling their pulp-and-ink brethren, according to Amazon.com.

Amazon hit a symbolic milestone last holiday season, when for one day its sales of e-books exceeded the number of dead-tree books it had sold.

Now the company has hit a more significant milestone, selling 143 e-books for every 100 hardcover books sold over the course of the second quarter. The rate is accelerating: For the past month, Amazon sold 180 e-books for every 100 hardcovers, and it sold three times as many e-books in the first six months of this year as it did in the first half of 2009.

Amazon’s Kindle bookstore now offers more than 630,000 books, Amazon says, plus 1.8 million free, out-of-copyright titles.

The overall e-book market is still a 90-pound weakling next to the Asiatic elephant of print publishing. According to a report from Publisher’s Weekly last year, hardback sales were projected to be about $4.4 billion in 2009 (including both adult and children’s titles), while paperbacks were expected to generate $5.1 billion in revenue, audiobooks $218 million, and e-books just $81 million — less than 1 percent of the print equivalents. That’s not even counting textbooks, Bibles and professional books — with those included, Publisher’s Weekly estimated the overall book market at $35 billion in 2009.

Amazon also stated that sales of its Kindle e-book reader have tripled since it cut the price from $260 to $190, although Amazon did not provide any hard numbers about the number it had sold. The Kindle has topped Amazon’s list of bestselling products almost since it was first released two years ago.

Readers don’t need a Kindle to read Kindle books, however. Amazon also offers Kindle e-book readers for the iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, Android phones, and for Mac and Windows PCs. That kind of cross-platform reach is no doubt helping to increase the customer base for Amazon’s e-books, but it also serves as a reassuring security blanket: Even if you break your Kindle or lose it, you’ll still be able to read the books you’ve bought. While Amazon doesn’t provide a breakdown of sales by platform, we’re guessing that the vast majority come via the Kindle device, which, with its free 3G wireless connection and dead-simple e-bookstore, makes purchasing books about as effortless as can be.

Amazon’s e-book crusade is also helped by the fact that hardcover books cost $26 on average, while Kindle books are far less. More than 510,000 of the titles in Amazon’s e-book catalog cost $10 or less, according to the company.

With a discount like that, it’d take just about 11 e-books to justify the cost of a $180 Kindle, assuming you would have bought all of the hardcover alternatives at full price.

And since e-books cost Amazon virtually nothing to distribute, the company — and the publishers whose books it is selling — should be enjoying pretty fat margins on these titles too.

No wonder Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos always looks so happy.

[RainingLemur]

I wonder if they count free ebooks as actual purchases.

Regardless, it's a cool milestone. Congrats to Amazon and all the other ebook vendors out there.

[Giggleton]

Please remember that ebooks require the death of many trees.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by RainingLemur

I wonder if they count free ebooks as actual purchases.

Regardless, it's a cool milestone. Congrats to Amazon and all the other ebook vendors out there.

They've previously said they don't.
They may not reveal specifics but they are also careful not to puff up their numbers in ways that could...annoy...regulators. It's like their catalog size, where they distinguish between revenue-generating commercial titles (600k) and the 1.8 million free and pd titles, where others would (and do) add up the numbers to claim millions of books in *their* catalog.
All indications are their obfuscation is aimed at competitors, not consumers.

[OtterBooks]

Originally Posted by RainingLemur

I wonder if they count free ebooks as actual purchases.

I wondered that as well, but I think the figures would be ridiculous if they did so I doubt it. It would show every new Kindle owner as "buying" like 10 books on first day of ownership.

[carld]

As fjtorres says, they've always stated that free books are not included in their sales figures.

[carld]

Something's hinky about that site. How can they sell Agency books for less than retail? The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is published by Random House and sells for half what Amazon and B&N charge. That's exactly what you're not supposed to be able to do.

Edit: Looking at booksoldier's posts I see that he's a spammer for what's likely a pirate site. I reported him and advise against giving that site your credit card information.

[carld]

So how do they sell for less than Agency pricing allows?

Looking at your listed device, and your nasty attitude, I'm guessing you're a sockpuppet for the guy who just got banned and had his posts deleted.

[ProfCrash]

Gee and his device name is a commonly held device.

[Joykins]

Who buys hardcovers at full price? Certainly not Amazon or B&N or Borders customers.

Let's say there is an average of $8 average savings in buying a $9.99 new release e-book rather than a $17.99 discount hardcover which is probably more average. That would make the $140 (wifi-only) Kindle break even at 17 new releases--which is a sort of lower limit on the real break-even price, especially if you are buying new Agency mmpb releases for $7.99 that are sold at $7.19 or lower in paperback. The advantage is the free public domain and promotional books, which may present a savings comparable to or more than the hardcover savings.

Looks like the spammer's post is deleted, I can't see it.

[mldavis2]

I suspect most new eReader owners, as I did, downloaded dozens if not hundreds of free classic titles which may have temporarily spiked the numbers and depressed the purchase of new titles. Amazon has the ability to play the numbers game any way they like. What they do with them is anyone's guess.

[Anthem]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

Please remember that ebooks require the death of many trees.

So true. No matter how much people lay into printed ephemera, it won't change the fact that there is blood (pulp?) on the hands of many.

We haven't created a book, or form of book, or form of electronic anything that doesn't require fairly ample natural resources.

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by Anthem

So true. No matter how much people lay into printed ephemera, it won't change the fact that there is blood (pulp?) on the hands of many.

We haven't created a book, or form of book, or form of electronic anything that doesn't require fairly ample natural resources.

Yes, especially the oil used to create the Kindle, which is in fact dead trees.

[carld]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

Yes, especially the oil used to create the Kindle, which is in fact dead trees.

Oil is fossilized plankton and algae.

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by carld

Oil is fossilized plankton and algae.

Trees are modified algae.