50% of fiction bestsellers sales are ebooks, 25% of nonfiction

[charmian]

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/b...al-divide.html

For fiction, the digital-print split hovered consistently around the 50/50 mark. With excitement over the film adaptation prompting renewed interest in the title, 48% of sales of The Great Gatsby went to e-books in the first six months of 2013. The digital-to-print breakdowns for The Best of Me by Nicholas Sparks and The Innocent by David Baldacci were right down the middle, with 50% of sales of each title coming from e-books. The Third Wheel, the seventh in Jeff Kinney’s illustration-heavy Diary of a Wimpy Kid storybook series, presents a notable exception to the pattern, with sales skewing toward physical books. Two Dr. Seuss books—Oh, The Places You’ll Go and Green Eggs and Ham—were among the top 20 bestselling print books through June, but those titles are available in digital form only as apps, not as e-books.

So, non-fiction is still 75% print, and illustrated books are probably even more than that. Are people currently seeing a difference in the relative sizes of fiction v. nonfiction v. illustrated book sections at bookstores?

[doctorow]

It kinda makes sense. The "bigger" the book (textbooks) or the more content-rich, the more likely you won't like to read it on a cramped e-paper display.

[HarryT]

Are these US figures or world-wide?

[doctorow]

The article suggests that the data is from Nielsen BookScan. They do international sales data monitoring for English-language books. An example brochure:

http://www.nielsenbookscan.com.au/up...0-%20UK(1).pdf

[HarryT]

Thanks. It's just that all the titles mentioned are US ones.

[Canuck_in_Japan]

I really get tired of not being to be able to understand what the pictures/maps in non-fiction ebooks are even supposed to represent. I mean, the pbook versions are all hires and clear as day. But when it comes to maps I don't even know what I'm looking at. I really enjoyed the ebook version of 1491 but I would have enjoyed it a lot more had I read the p-book version.

[FizzyWater]

Originally Posted by Canuck_in_Japan

I really get tired of not being to be able to understand what the pictures/maps in non-fiction ebooks are even supposed to represent. I mean, the pbook versions are all hires and clear as day. But when it comes to maps I don't even know what I'm looking at. I really enjoyed the ebook version of 1491 but I would have enjoyed it a lot more had I read the p-book version.

This would be one of the few advantages I can see to reading on tablet rather than an eReader - the publisher could include a link to a higher-resolution version of the map for those able to check online while reading.

I agree about the difficulty with maps in fiction books on the the various eReaders - they're usually worthless when scrunched down to that size!

[Graham]

Originally Posted by FizzyWater

This would be one of the few advantages I can see to reading on tablet rather than an eReader - the publisher could include a link to a higher-resolution version of the map for those able to check online while reading.

I agree about the difficulty with maps in fiction books on the the various eReaders - they're usually worthless when scrunched down to that size!

Wouldn't it be nice if there was a standard tag in epub that you could wrap around an image which would throw the picture to the display device of your choice? Imagine reading on eInk and tapping to flip the map to your tablet or TV.

Graham

[spellbanisher]

I'd imagine the split would vary depending on the kind of nonfiction ebook. Recent memoirs and biographies probably have a split closer to fiction. Textbooks and reference books probably have even greater disparities.

The majority of academic books i read, history monographs, aren't even available in ebook form. These aren't textbooks or image heavy books. Most of them don't even have pictures. It is irksome that a substantial proportion of the history monographs available in ebook form lack hyperlinked end notes or even a functioning table of contents.

[speakingtohe]

I can see why children's books that rely heavily on illustrations or on ornate and/or difficult to read fonts would not sell well as ebooks.

I'm a bit surprised that best selling fiction is already at the 50% mark though. I wonder what library statistics would tell us these days for books where there are approximately the same number of copies available in electronic and print.

Helen

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

I'm a bit surprised that best selling fiction is already at the 50% mark though.

Tablets and smartphones.
You already own the device so when a given book becomes trendy it is easy to check it out without having to buy a dedicated device. No long term commitment required.
iBook sales lean strongly towards BPH titles because of this.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by Canuck_in_Japan

I really get tired of not being to be able to understand what the pictures/maps in non-fiction ebooks are even supposed to represent. I mean, the pbook versions are all hires and clear as day. But when it comes to maps I don't even know what I'm looking at. I really enjoyed the ebook version of 1491 but I would have enjoyed it a lot more had I read the p-book version.

I ended up checking out (and renewing a couple of times) the paper version of 1491 from my local library to look at the illustrations from time to time. I read it over (many) lunches, so I didn't encounter very many on any given read. When I was in the vicinity of the pbook version and I thought of it, I would locate the illustrations and look at them for a bit.

Not perfect, but I got the advatanges of both and never had to lug around a huge book. Not very practical for books always on hold, but I read it last year and it worked well for me. I've done it with a couple of other books as well.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by FizzyWater

This would be one of the few advantages I can see to reading on tablet rather than an eReader - the publisher could include a link to a higher-resolution version of the map for those able to check online while reading.

That would be great, but has a publisher ever actually done that?

It would also be nice for books with high resolution illustrations to have a web site with just the illustrations so people without tablets can view them on a computer. Even people with tablets could benefit from a large screen. Panning around, even if it is available is not the same.

For some books with decent enough color illustrations and long stretches of text, I have ended up reading with e-ink for the light weight and better for me text display and switching to a table to look at a pretty picture.

Originally Posted by FizzyWater

I agree about the difficulty with maps in fiction books on the the various eReaders - they're usually worthless when scrunched down to that size!

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by Graham

Wouldn't it be nice if there was a standard tag in epub that you could wrap around an image which would throw the picture to the display device of your choice? Imagine reading on eInk and tapping to flip the map to your tablet or TV.
Graham

That would be nice. I don't see any reason to limit it to epub, though.

[artig]

Originally Posted by FizzyWater

This would be one of the few advantages I can see to reading on tablet rather than an eReader - the publisher could include a link to a higher-resolution version of the map for those able to check online while reading.

The book "The Age of Insight" by Eric R. Kandel, published by Random House, has a viewable or downloadable PDF file with charts and images from the book. Very useful.

It really annoys me when finding that a non-fiction ebook has an index of illustrations, but the illustrations have not been included in the ebook version. Or there are references in the book to illustrations that are not included. Maybe I should try complaining and returning the book.

Not quite as serious, but still annoying is when the illustrations are not found near the text that refers to them. Some have them at the end of the book, or at the end of each chapter. Similar to footnotes.