From the Financial Times:
Sales of e-books in February tripled over the previous year to $90.3m, the Association of American Publishers reported, exceeding adult paperback sales of $81.2m.
A 169 per cent surge in e-book revenues since the start of the year contrasted with a 24.8 per cent decline in print book sales to $442m over the two-month period. February figures showed steeper declines in some print categories, with adult hardcover sales falling 43 per cent to $46.2m and mass-market paperbacks down 41.5 per cent at $29.3m.
” February figures showed steeper declines in some print categories, with adult hardcover sales falling 43 per cent to $46.2m and mass-market paperbacks down 41.5 per cent at $29.3m.’
If this figure holds it is just brutal; no wonder everyone is scrambling to get into ebooks
In general, ebooks are cheaper than paperbacks of the same title which suggests that not only did ebooks outsell adult paperbacks by nearly 14% in the month in dollar terms, but unit sales must have been considerably higher than that. Plus, the AAP figures probably include only mainstream publishers whereas many ebook readers are sampling from indie sources either directly or through ebook stores such as Amazon and Kobo.
In all, it’s pretty remarkable how quickly the world has been changing since Amazon went International in Oct 2009.
I don’t understand why so many analysts predict e-books will have 50% of the market by 2015. Seems it’ll be quite a bit sooner than that the way things have been going.
@Alexander Inglis wrote:
“Plus, the AAP figures probably include only mainstream publishers whereas many ebook readers are sampling from indie sources either directly or through ebook stores such as Amazon and Kobo.”
I’m an indie publisher, and I was contacted by the AAP and the Book Industry Study Group this month for information on my yearly sales since 2008, for this project. I assume that other indie publishers are also being contacted. It will be interesting to see what the results of the survey show.
For those who love graphs the blogger at http://ebookcomments.blogspot.com/2011/04/february-2011-ebook-sales.html
There is an estimation there of Indie share of the market.
@Andrys Basten: Odds are the analysts are basing their estimates on:
1- print book purchase rates, thereby neglecting the “new toy” effect that leads new reader owners to stock up on content to fill up the reader’s virtual shelves/homescreen
2- dedicated reader sales, primarily, thereby under-rating ebook sales to PC, PDA, smartphone, and webpad owners
3- current hardcover pricing, thereby neglecting the unavoidable price increases needed to maintain BPH margins as declining print book sales lead to smaller print runs and higher per-unit costs
4- current Agency Pricing levels, thereby ignoring the growth in share of non-agency ebook publishers and their lower-priced output and the downward pressure this will exert on agency-priced ebooks, blunting or even negating the Big Publishing Houses’ plan of using ebook revenue to offset their declining hardcover margins.
Essentially the analysts are still modeling the 2008/2009 ebook industry (with Agency pricing) rather than the 2010/2011 industry. Their models haven’t caught up with the “internet-time” changes going on even as we speak. So, naturally, their models will be more conservative than the murkily-emerging reality. Its hard to blame them; odds are most of them are publishing industry veterans rather than tech industry or consumer retailing experts. And the idea that power is shifting from the gatekeeper publishers to the content sources (authors) and consumers is hard to quantify under the best of conditions.
Or to put it another way: the analysts are not properly factoring in changing consumer and author behavior. Authors will be demanding (and getting) higher royalties and consumers will be demanding (and, like it or not, getting) lower prices. And the current economic model of batch-printed bestseller hardcovers is headed for collapse.
I’m not ready to joing MITs Negroponte in predicting print books will be dead by 2014 but I do think the rate of change is going to be faster than the industry insiders think and that, yes, eBooks will be the core product of the industry well before 2015. Best guess? 2013. And I’m probably just as guilty of conservatism as the analysts.
I’m just not ready to stand by a prediction of, say, eighteen months. 😉
Hey! by August 2011 I’ll be able to buy ebooks and pay them with my landline bill! Yay!
In the meantime credit card only, starting… next April 20th!!! Isn’t it wonderful!
http://www.telecompaper.com/news/telefonica-launches-ebooks-platform-in-argentina