Same-Day E-Book Sales Propel Grisham's Thriller

[SensualPoet]

Another example of how ebooks are changing the publishing industry at a breath-taking pace.

Wall Street Journal: Same-Day E-Book Sales Propel Grisham's Thriller

John Grisham's 24th legal thriller, The Confession, sold 230,000 copies in its first week ... a pace exceeding his previous tale, The Associate, measured by the first week of sales. Except the latest novel was released in both hardcover and ebook on the same day: 70,000 of the 230,000 copies were ebooks.

Amazon reported the Kindle ebook outsold the hardcover to its customers during this first week. And Doubleday cut the print run to 1.5 million for the hardcover (The Associate was 1.9 million) in anticipation of heightened ebook sales.

Hachette, one of the Big Five, also stated 9% of its US book revenues (not units, revenues), are ebooks, not paper, for the first 9 months of 2010. This is about the same statistic mentioned by other mainstream publishers.

(FYI. The ebook is $9.99 and the hardcover $15.48 from Amazon. It's also Number 1 in ebooks at Amazon but only Number 8 in paper.)

The future, ladies and gentlemen, has arrived.

[colinsky]

This raises an interesting discussion point.

Both Grisham's book and the new Wheel of Time novel were released this week. The latter, as some of you are aware, with a 3-month delay until the ebook version is released. It has been strongly implied (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=yQWIMxOpWV8 , about a minute in) that this release delay was set because ebook sales are not counted when calculating NY Times Best Seller rankings.

With high ebook sales for Grisham, it will VERY interesting to see whether that approach worked or not, and which book ends up ranking higher at the end of the week.

[GA Russell]

Thanks SP. I wrote a comment to the article, voicing the views of many here.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by colinsky

This raises an interesting discussion point.

that this release delay was set because ebook sales are not counted when calculating NY Times Best Seller rankings.

That's correct. Ebooks aren't counted. Neither are Amazon hardcover sales.

[SensualPoet]

I am thinking there is a likelihood that John Grisham will shortly become the third member of Kindle's Million eSales Club based on its own cumulative sales Grisham's books. Steig Larsson in late July and James Patterson in late October were number one and two respectively.

[abookreader]

Kind of ironic to see 30% of his sales as digital given Grisham's initial reluctance toward eBooks.

[Bikeridr]

Originally Posted by SensualPoet

I am thinking there is a likelihood that John Grisham will shortly become the third member of Kindle's Million eSales Club

Let's really hope not!
At least not until Grisham and/or the publisher(s) removes the Geographical Restriction.
Actually there are *NONE* of Grishams books avilable as ebooks in Europe

Btw; is there anybody who knows Grishams personal email address, so that I can inform him of a lost sale?
(I'll also put my complaint up on the lostbooksales.com)

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Bikeridr

Actually there are *NONE* of Grishams books avilable as ebooks in Europe

That's incorrect. All of Mr. Grisham's books are available as eBooks to UK customers.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by Bikeridr

Actually there are *NONE* of Grishams books avilable as ebooks in Europe

Are you sure? From Wikipedia I went to http://www.johngrisham.co.uk/
and they give links to 3 websites to get the ebooks.

Too late. Harry answered first

[Bikeridr]

OK, Correction;
None of Grishams ebooks are available in Europe, except UK.

See below Prt Sc's of my Amazon account when trying to order the mentioned ebook.
Grisham and his publishers should be informed that I will *NOT* buy his Dead Tree books. Also I'll boycott the movies based on his books until the Geographical Restriction is lifted.
That's how I vote with my wallet.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by HarryT

That's incorrect. All of Mr. Grisham's books are available as eBooks to UK customers.

You should know by now, Harry, that the UK isn't Europe. The UK is the UK.

[Bikeridr]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

You should know by now, Harry, that the UK isn't Europe. The UK is the UK.

Exactly what I wanted to say, but found I had too few postings here to say just that

[jhempel24]

I think the fact that this book was plastered on every website known to man, plus all over stores on special displays helped that too LOL.

I went to Sams and they had a special display....Kroger, special display....www.guitarnoise.com was an ad LOL.

[SensualPoet]

Hey, bikeridr! Why not post your comment directly attached to the John Grisham article? I'm sure he or an associate will see it. The WSJ link is in the OP above.

[Bikeridr]

Originally Posted by SensualPoet

Hey, bikeridr! Why not post your comment directly attached to the John Grisham article? I'm sure he or an associate will see it. The WSJ link is in the OP above.

Done. Or at least I twitred about it. I do not feel the urge to sign up or register to wsj in order to comment.
Also I tried the official John Grisham web site, but there were no means there to make anycontact whatsoever.
Oh well, his loss. It's a pity he feels rich enough to exclude 95% of the world.

As a side note; Tom Egeland, a Norwegian author has two ebooks at Amazon, whereof one is georestricted (stupidly, as a Norwegian, I can't buy an ebook by a Norwegian author).
Within 5 minutes he personally replied to me and informed he was renegotiating the rights management and that he'd see if the ebooks would be made available for the Kindle/Amazon.