Jan 28,2011 Juno Ecommerce Ecommerce
Amazon: Kindle Ebooks Outsell Paperbacks Online
Now this one came as a big surprise to me. If history has taught us anything it’s that paperback books really are priceless. I mean there are the original Shakespeare that are worth a staggering amount of money, the collectables that are the Peter Rabbit Chronicles and of course every other great novel out there that is somewhat of a classic.
Books really are treasured items that live on; they are read by one person, then passed on to another and so on, their trails often lasting a lifetime. So you can imagine my surprise and confusion when I read the headline ‘E-book downloads outsell paperbacks’, could the oldest classic alive ‘the book’ really be on its way to the recycling plant?
Over recent weeks Amazon has announced that in the United States the the Amazon website that more E-books for Amazon’s Kindle devices have been purchased than paperback books in the last 3 months of 2010.
Although this may be the case for Amazon, do not fear book-lovers all is not as bad as it seems as paperback book sales also appear to on the increase, just not as high an increase as e-books. Amazon are said to be selling 115 e-books to every 100 paperbacks.
Amazon have no reason to relax as yet though as although the company has seen increased sales of its e-books, its profit margins are not on the up and are infact down due to the company spending money on discounting, acquisitions and building new depots. The company’s shares have fallen 9% during after-hours trading and they are not selling overall; what they were expecting.
So will Amazon overtake the paperback? Has the paperback book seen better days? Have we all forgotten tradition in place for technology? We are certainly seeing a massive migration of purchasing through the online space.
Who knows, only time will tell. All I can say is; watch this space!