UK pBook sales fall, eBook sales rise, in 2012.

[HarryT]

Sales of printed books fell by almost £74m in the UK last year, according to data from Nielsen BookScan.

In total, readers spent £1.514bn on physical books in 2012, down 4.6% from 2011.

The rate of decline slowed slightly, principally because of EL James' Fifty Shades trilogy, which accounted for one in every 20 books bought last year.

E-books continued to be popular, accounting for 13-14% of book sales.

That marked an increase of about 5% from 2011, but the value of the entire book market shrank because of heavy discounting of digital titles - with many bestsellers retailing for less than a pound.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-20908048

ie, overall, people are buying more books, but paying less for them.

The "many bestsellers retailing for less than a pound" comment presumably refers to things like the "Kindle Daily Deal", where Amazon sell a book for one day only at 99p. Amazon totally dominate the UK eBook market, much more so than in the US, since there's no strong 2nd place rival like B&N, who have about 25% of the US eBook market.