Ebooks eat into print sales for Amazon

Kindle catches up, and overtakes, Amazon sales of popular print titles.

In an article, online store, Amazon, claimed that its customers are buying Kindle versions of best-selling books at greater levels than print editions.

Steve Kessel, senior vice-president of Amazon Kindle said that Kindle books are not only outselling their print counterparts in the top 25, 100 and 1000 best-seller, but also in the top 10, where Kindle versions were being purchased more than twice as often as print editions.

“This is remarkable when you consider than we’ve been selling hardcover and paperback books for 15 years, and Kindle books for just 36 months,” he said.

President of the Galley Club and manager of SOS Print + Media, Michael Schulz (pictured), told Print21 that Amazon’s findings reflect a trend in consumption for mass-market books.

“I think there will definitely be a very significant change in the way books are consumed and bought, especially the big sellers,” he said. “However, for the non-mass sellers and the long tail, the impact may not be as high. For the educational market, I think adoption very much depends on advances in the readability and the way students can work with texts on e-readers. At this point, paper seems to still have significant advantages.”

These thoughts were expressed by one reader of the article, who commented that: “Guess I’m just plan old-fashioned. I love sitting by an open fire or curling up in bed with a good book.”

[Not old-fashioned, just showing good taste. Ed]