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Old 02-04-2010, 03:13 PM   #55
calvin-c
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mcl View Post
What we don't have are numbers that would show how many book sales there would have been without the ebook sales.
Certainly we do-compare Amazon's pbook sales before they started selling ebooks to their current pbook sales, adjusted for market growth. (Which is a 'bugger' factor that you can assume to be whatever you need it to be to 'prove' your argument, but I tend to accept the experts' opinions on that.)

I think Bezos is an expert-or at least hires experts-although I'm not certain he's telling the truth. I'd prefer to develop the figures myself, but I haven't found any so far. I'm also not quite certain how to define market growth-is it the number of people who buy books or the number of books people buy?

Several studies have shown that people who buy ebooks tend to buy more books, on avarage, than people who buy pbooks. No studies, that I know of, have tested for cross-correlation (i.e. most people who buy ebooks also buy pbooks-so how does that skew the 'market growth' figures?)

So it's my opinion that it would take an expert (probably an economist, although a statistician might be better) to decide how to adjust pbook sales for market growth. Bezos almost certainly has experts who could do this on his payroll, whether or not he's asked them to do this is another question. As is whether or not he's paid any attention to their conclusions.

My own opinion is that pbook sales, per person, are falling as most 'heavy' readers shift to ebooks. I haven't seen evidence of the increased market growth that would make up for this in pbook sales-which means that ebook sales are 'taking away' from potential pbook sales. But as stated, I haven't been able to find figures to prove that so it's only my opinion. FWIW.
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