Excerpted from today's Shelf Awareness
Amazon.com issued one of its classic press releases yesterday, throwing out lots of numbers but omitting unit sales for the Kindle or e-books, the kind of information that would have made the numbers more meaningful. Among the points:
During the past three months, Amazon has sold 143 e-books for Kindles for every 100 hardcovers, and during the past month the company has sold 180 e-books for every 100 hardcovers. (These figures include sales of hardcovers for which there is no Kindle edition and exclude free e-books.)
Amazon has sold three times as many Kindle e-books in the first half of 2010 as it did in the same period last year. (The company's e-books can be read on Kindle apps on iPads, iPhones and other devices.)
The growth rate of Kindle unit sales has tripled since the company lowered the e-reader's price to $189 from $259 a month ago.
The increase in sales of e-books for Kindles has risen faster than the rate of increase of e-book sales reported by publishers to the AAP of 163% in May and 207% for the year to date through May.
Of the 1.14 million e-book editions of James Patterson titles that Hachette Book Group said earlier this month have been sold, some 867,881 were Kindle e-books.
The Times noted that the gains in sales growth came as competition increased, particularly following the introduction this year of Apple's iPad as well as a new version of Barnes & Noble's Nook and the Kobo e-reader, sold here by Borders. Fears about that new competition have led Amazon's stock price to drop about 16% in the past three months.
For its part, the Wall Street Journal noted that e-competitors of Amazon have similar news: B&N has had "a big uptick" in sales of the Nook since it cut prices a month ago and Sony told the paper that sales of the Reader in the second quarter were triple the same period a year earlier. Moreover, the Journal suggested that the numbers may not be representative, saying that despite its size, Amazon "still attracts an online audience that is more inclined to be early adopters of new reading technology."
Whether e-readers and e-books are cutting into sales of trade paperbacks,
publishers told the Journal that the verdict is still out. Madeline McIntosh,
president, sales, operations and digital at Random House, commented: "Our
conclusion is that there's no data to prove any connection--good or bad--between
growth in e-books and the growth or decline, in trade paperback sales....
If anything, we may be seeing a positive effect in which the steady pace
of e-book sales helps to keep a book in front-of-mind for a growing number
of consumers after hardcover momentum slows."