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Ebooks are only 6% of book sales, says article
September 23, 2010 | 9:05 am
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By Paul Biba
Reader David Cassel sent me an email that I thought was worth sharing with you:
I thought you might be interested in this. MIT’s technology blog argues that ebook sales represent “only six pecent of
the total market for new books.”
Amazon recently announced they sell 180 ebooks for every 100 hardcover books, but when paperbacks are counted, ebooks represent just 29.3% of all Amazon’s book sales. And while Amazon holds about 19% of the book market, they currently represent 90% of all ebook sales – suggesting that ebooks represent a tiny fraction of all print books sold.
While MIT’s Nicholas Negroponte predicts the death of the book within five years, Christopher Mims argues that “it’s just as likely that as the ranks of the early adopters get saturated, adoption of ebooks will slow.”
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Comments:
I went and read the original article at the MIT Technology blog. There are a few discrepancies that I as an ebook reader see. They have not taken into their equations the fact that Amazon allows others to say that they sell 90% of ebooks sold, but those of us who have been purchasing and reading ebooks for more than 5 years all know that this is not possible. There are literaly hundreds of independent ebook publishers whose sales are not being recorded as they should for the statistics that people who make these articles to use. I would believe that even with the resale print book markets the total print book sales are only about 70% more than those of total ebook sales. I myself own nearly 50 times more ebooks than I do print books and I own several hundred print books.
It’s the purchased books that matter, ultimately, since sales drives the eco-system.
So far this year I’ve bought about 30 e-books, mainly from Amazon and Kobo; that’s approximately 29 more of any kind of books I bought in 2009.
But, beyond anecdotes, the APA is reporting drastic upticks in ebook dollar volume: $46 million in July, three times higher than a year earlier. One of the big six stated last spring that ebooks already represented 6% of ALL the firms sales (units? dollars? dunno). And, is this a “new” metric? The MIT calling out 6% of “the total market of new books”?
I’ll put my sticky on the wall: ebooks will surpass 25% of all US English book sales by the end of 2011 AND Amazon will have sold 75% of them.
Of the six percent of e-book sales how many of the new titles are also available in print? We need to watch print/screen combo titles as well to fully appreciate how tiny the e-book market is.
Also beware false correlation since both print and screen are growing and appear unconnected.
Are there any statistics on books sold online vs brick and mortar?
Why does anyone pay any attention to sloppy amateur reporting such as this embarrassing article by CHRISTOPHER MIMS who is damned by 5 reaons why he should look for another career.
1) He claims “back of the envelope calculations suggest that ebooks are only six pecent of the total market for new books.” I guess ‘back of the envelope’ isn’t what it used to be considering his supporting reference clearly only refers to 6% of ‘Amazon’s sales’. Since when did Amazon represent the 100% whole of the publishing industry ? And even if the 6% figure is correct I would suggest that when a brand new reading media, that has only been available to the public for a couple of years, has already grown to 6% we should rightly be astonished. Especially when the owners of the devices represent only a tiny early adopting fraction of the mainstream reading public.
2) Mr Mims unsupported assertion that Amazon has 90% of the eBook market is not credible. Yet Mr Mims doesn’t even hesitate to say “.. It’s facts like these…”
If you ask me I don’t think much of Mr Mims or his ‘facts’.
3) Mr Mims says “unlike the move from CDs to MP3s, there is no easy way to convert our existing stock of books to e-readers.” Clearly despite writing for the Technology Review, he is unaware of the speed scanning devices that are widespread and being used by, for example, Google in their book projects.
4) Mr Mims claims ” .. as a delivery mechanism, Ebooks are nothing like music .” I find this curious when considering the fact that eBooks are a fraction of the file size and are being sold and downloaded ‘on demand’ on devices such as the Kindle and the Nook and the iPad in exactly the same fashion as Music is.
I am left wondering if this guy actually gets paid to write this stuff ? How do I get a cut of this easy money ?