eBooks Continue the March
Jinfo Blog

19th July 2010

By Nancy Davis Kho

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For Amazon, cutting the price of its Kindle reader from US $259 to US$189 last month certainly seems to have paid off, and quickly. According to figures released by Amazon today, unit sales of the device have accelerated each month in the second quarter, both on a sequential month-over-month basis and on a year-over-year basis. Among the data nuggets in the Amazon press release (http://digbig.com/5bcayh) was the fact that over the past three months, Amazon has sold 143 Kindle books every 100 hardcover books. Free Kindle books- the 1.8 million free, out-of-copyright, pre-1923 books available on the device at no cost - are excluded from that count and, if included, would make the number even higher. It appears that cutting book prices to US$9.99 prior to the winter holidays to spur content purchase for all those Kindles under the Christmas tree achieved its goal as well; Amazon sold more than three times as many Kindle books in the first half of 2010 as in the first half of 2009. For context from the broader market, the Association of American Publishers' data from July 14 says that publishers' total book sales for the month of May increased 9.8% percent over the prior year to $715.3 million and were up by 11.6 percent over last year-to-date. That's good news, but pales in comparison to their report that, "E-book sales grew 162.8 percent for the month ($29.3 million), year-to-date eBook sales are up 207.4 percent. Year-To-Date E-book sales of the 13 submitting publishers to that category currently comprise 8.48 % of the total trade books market, compared to 2.89% percent for the same period last year." Admittedly, eBooks are still playing a minority role in the overall publishing market, but those growth rates are nothing to cough at. The May 21 Professional Content Report from Simba Information (http://digbig.com/5bcayj) found that professional publishing companies are getting the message. It reported that McGraw-Hill Professional increased the number of E-book titles on offer by 12% between 2008 through 2009, with the division now offering 5,000 e-books; that Springer Science+Business Media now offers 30,000 titles, confirming the company as the largest STM e-book publisher in the world; and that Wolter Kluwer Health’s eBooks production grew by 78.8% to 1,836 in 2009. The devices are flying off the shelves and the publishers are finally putting titles that matter into digital format. It seems like eBook inroads into the professional setting may officially be underway.

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