The digital revolution in publishing has hit a major milestone with Amazon.com announcing that the sales of their Kindle e-books have outpaced sales of paperback books so far in 2011 for the first time.
Sales of the Kindle e-books have also been three times greater that hardback sales. All these figures do not include any free e-book downloads. Here is an article that highlights this achievement.
The surge in digital sales is predicted to fundamentally change the book publishing industry, especially the traditional brick and mortar bookstores.
At the recently held Digital Book World conference, James McQuivey of Forrester Research presented some research findings before a CEO panel on Tuesday. He included the estimate that consumers spent about $1 billion on e-books in 2010 and that sales should reach at least $1.3 billion in 2011. McQuivey said that the consensus among those surveyed was that e-books would constitute half of all trade book units by 2014, and 53 percent said they expected print sales to decrease this year.
I do not yet have an actual Kindle, but as I have blogged before I have had both an iPhone and now a PC Kindle app and love it. I have purchased more e-books in the last two months than physical books.
Is this a sign of things to come? Let me know if you have jumped on the digital e-book revolution yet and where you think we are headed.
Written by Dan Davidson, from his WordSketching.com blog
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