The Los Angeles Times and the New York Times are both reporting that Amazon is selling 80% more e-books than hardcover books. Jeff Bezos, CEO, says, “Astonishing when considering that we’ve been selling hardcover books for 15 years and Kindle books for 33 months.”
A couple of interesting things from the articles. Amazon says that the surge in e-books is likely due to the price cut of the Kindle device in early June. Since that time sales have tripled.
Does this mean Amazon will cut their prices even further? I personally think they will, and probably the only thing keeping them from doing so now is the fear of running out of devices. If you drop the price to $99, and then people have to wait 2 months to get them, they won’t be happy.
But I hope they are gearing up production and planning on dropping the price somewhere down the road. In fact, woot.com, which was recently acquired by Amazon, sold Kindles for $149 for a day. I wonder if that gave the company an idea of how many Kindles could be sold at a lower price.
The New York Times pointed out that Amazon has roughly 630,000 e-books, while they have millions of print books. So even though there are less e-books, it’s clear that people are making the shift.
Also interesting to note, sales of print books were up 22% this year. Maybe that’s a little of the open model at work? People finding digital books they like, then buying the print books?
Another interesting bit from the NY Times article:
“Some industry analysts say that many people do not consider the iPad to be a reading device the way the Kindle is, and see a need to own both. Amazon’s latest sales figures are “clearly an indication that the iPad is complementary to the Kindle, not a replacement.”
The only part I didn’t care for was the New York times throwing out rhetoric like, “Monday was a day for the history books — if those will even exist in the future.” and “Book lovers mourning the demise of hardcover books with their heft and their musty smell need a reality check”
Stage theater survived movie theaters; movie theaters survived television; radios survived CDs and mp3s; and we’ve still yet to see the ‘paperless office’. Just because e-books are becoming popular, doesn’t mean we need to start digging the grave for print book. It’s simply another way to enjoy storytelling, and quite frankly will provide new ways that print never did.
If you love print books, you have nothing to worry about. If you’re an writer or a reader of books, this news is good news.
Amazon.com says it’s selling 80% more downloaded books than hardcovers
“The Kindle format has now overtaken the hardcover format,” says Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive. A drastic cut in the price of the Kindle portable reader is probably a major factor.
There’s more evidence that digital books are upending the publishing industry.
Internet retailer Amazon.com Inc. says it is now selling 80% more downloaded books than hardbacks. Amazon’s download format is for its Kindle electronic reader as well as other devices.
“The Kindle format has now overtaken the hardcover format,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, in a statement.
I’ve been keeping my eye out for stories around the new Google Editions, Google’s entrance into the e-book fray. Still no word from Google, but I did come across this very good write up of how Editions will change the e-book landscape. It’s worth a read.
I haven’t taken a break from blogging, I’ve just been doing it somewhere else. My blog over at Open Author is hopping, and has been taking up a lot of my time. Make sure to subscribe if you haven’t already.
However, I couldn’t pass up this great article from Wired. The content was interesting, but the sealing deal was this quote. If you know me, you know I can’t pass up an article with a quote like this without mentioning it.
“As a result, Falcon was able to begin selling its urinals to St. Clair Hospital in Pittsburgh. Those units have been in operation since 2004. So far, there have been no urinal-related deaths.”
If you’ve been hanging out on the internet for a while, chances are you’ve heard of the Long Tail. This phrase was made popular by Chris Anderson, editor for Wired magazine, back in 2004.
Let’s cover the basics of the Long Tail. Imagine you own a book store. You have enough shelf space for one thousand books. However your supplier has over 10,000 books that you could choose to stock on your shelf. How do you decide which ones to sell?
The answer is simple, if you have the right data. You simply choose the top 1000 books that sell better than the rest. You buy and stock books that sell 100 copies a month, not the ones that sell only 20.
But now imagine you have an online bookstore. Now you can stock an almost infinite number of books. You can sell books that are lesser known, and in fact, even though they don’t sell as much, you might sell more of them simply because there are more of them. In other words, the 9,000 books that only sell a few copies might bring in more money that the 1,000 copies that sell better.
So, what does this have to do with authors? Online bookstores such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble allow us to take advantage of this Long Tail philosophy. If you’ve ever gotten a rejection letter in which the editor says they love the book but it’s not marketable, then that is good news. That means your book is prime for the long tail. Get it out there in e-book form. Let people rate it and you will make fans. It may not be a blockbuster, but it’s something. And maybe it does better than folks expect, and you can land a print deal in the end.
Authors who have books out of print should also take advantage of the long tail, especially if your out of print books were only marketed to a limited market. With online retailers you can reach a wider audience and perhaps sell more books that your print copies did.
If you’d like to read more about the long tail, I recommend the Wikipedia article linked above, or the original Wired magazine article, available here.
Excellent post over at iReader Review. I’ve got some thoughts on this, but no time to write. For now, just read the article, as well as the thread that started it all, and prepare to discuss. :)
More speculation that Amazon should drop the price (even to zero?) and then make up the loss in e-book sales.
Will the Leapster break open e-books in the children’s market? The device is aimed at 4-9 year olds, so it’s possible.
Interesting article at Gizmodo around publishing an e-book, though I don’t know if I buy into the fact that authors can’t do it themselves, and need a service like fastpencil (note, the article is written by the foudner of fastpencil.com, so consider it an advertisement with good information).
Barnes & Noble is offering a few free e-books each week. It looks like these will be ‘classics’ such as Call of the Wild, Little Women, etc.–books already in the public domain. These books would be free to owners of B&N’s e-reader–the Nook.
It is my understanding that you can already get these books for free on the Kindle by going to the Gutenberg Project page. I don’t have a Kindle, so I don’t know for certain, but this site seems to suggest that it’s possible.
So to me I see little benefit added to these free books. Granted, if you’re not aware of Project Gutenberg, this may seem like a deal, but I see no reason why this would entice me to buy a Nook over the Kindle.
New authors are finding out that it’s easy to self-publish with some of the latest and greatest technologies. And with the increase of e-book readers, there is a temptation to throw your book out there. However, there are a few important things new authors should consider.
Two trains of thought when it comes to releasing a digital book. The first is to simply throw your book out there and see what happens. If it’s not good, you’ll get some feedback. You can take that feedback and make the book better. This is how open source software has worked from the very beginning–release early, release often. It’s a good model for content creation, but it doesn’t translate well to content consumption.
Let’s imagine I go to a friend’s YouTube channel and watch 2-3 of their videos. They are painfully lame. Chances are, I’m not going to sign up to follow his feed. And when I meet him, and he tells me he wants to shoot a movie, I will suspect that the movie won’t be good. That person has damaged their movie making brand by putting out poor movies.
I’ve got a complete manuscript–Almost Super. I have gotten some very good feedback from people who I trust—both publisher and editors alike. I think it’s close to being ready to publish. I say close, because my writing group has been doing a phenomenal job of showing me where I could improve it even more. Sure, I could put it on Amazon and Smashwords, and I’d hope a lot of people would buy it. In fact, at one point I presold 300 copies. But if my book is decent, people will think I’m a decent writer. If my book is outstanding, people will think I’m an outstanding writer. I want to be the latter.
As writers, we all have a brand. A writing brand is harder to earn, keep, and repair. I can listen to a song in three minutes. If I don’t like it, I may listen to the next song simply just because it’s easy to do so. But if I read a 300 page book and don’t like it, it’s going to take a lot to convince me to read another by the same author.
I had a friend tell me one time that just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should do something. This is the same question every writer should ask before they put up their work–not can I do this, but should I do this? And before you answer the question, think about your brand.
I can hear you all now…”What is that strange new icon at the bottom of your posts?” It’s called a Flattr (pronounced “muskrat”). The idea is pretty simple, and kind of cool. I’m taking part in the beta, and I belive I have a few invites, if any of you are interested. You can read more about it, and even watch a movie that helps explain it, here.
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