e-Book sales overtake hardbacks
From April to June, the company sold 43 per cent more digital books for its Kindle handheld device than hardback books, nearly three years after the electronic format became available, according to a press release Monday.
In June alone, digital books outsold hardbacks by 80 per cent.
The company did not provide total sales data for either format.
Sales of e-books, as they are also called, have been boosted by a drop in the price of the Kindle hardware, according to Amazon founder and chief executive officer Jeff Bezos.
“The growth rate of Kindle device unit sales has tripled since we lowered the price from 259 dollars to 189 dollars,” he was quoted as saying in a company press release, without indicating how many were sold.
Kindle books can also be read on competing hardware devices such as Apple Inc’s iPhone or iPad, or laptop computers.
Of the 630,000 e-book titles available for purchase on the Amazon website, over 510,000 cost under 10 dollars, the company said.
No information was provided on the price of Amazon’s hardbacks.
Amazon did not include downloads of its nearly 1.8 million electronic titles available free of charge.
The figures released did not include paperback sales, which represent over two-thirds of the market by revenue according to the Association of American Publishers.
Amazon is due to report second-quarter earnings after the close of the stock exchange on Thursday.
e-Book sales << comments and views
Loading ...