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E-Book Sales Booming, Now 9 Percent of Total Sales (And Still Small)

October 15, 2010 at 10:27 am PT

Data point of the day, from the Association of American Publishers: E-book sales are up 193 percent so far this year, and now comprise nine percent of all books sold.

J.P. Morgan’s Imran Khan puts that in context via this helpful chart. Remember that e-book sales didn’t really exist until the late fall of 2007, when Amazon introduced the first (really mugly) Kindle. And recall that Apple only entered the market in April of this year. So you can see where this is going (click to enlarge):

The caveat: The book market just isn’t that big. U.S. e-book sales to date are just $263 million, which means people have spent more money going to see “Clash of the Titans” and “The Expendables” this year than they have on digital ink.

Oooh! Great opportunity to show a clip from the best Elmore Leonard movie adaptation, hands down:

Tagged with: Amazon, Apple, Association of American Publishers, blogs, books, Clash of the Titans, digital, e-books, Elmore Leonrad, entertainment, Imran Khan, Internet, J. P. Morgan, Kindle, MediaMemo, Out of Sight, Peter Kafka, publishing, sales, television, The Expendables, video

comments so far. Add yours.

Anonymous

The digital music business started small and has now plateaued. I think the same will happen to the ebook business. It will have this fascinating gain and then meet a state of little or no change after progress.
http://eMarketingHeadStart.com/ Alex Arthur

It will be interesting to see whether the tablet fad becomes the impetus of a critical mass movement toward ebooks.
http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/ PKafka

Can’t see why it would.
Anonymous

If I have an opportunity to replace at least 200 lbs. of books and bookshelvies, never losing a book to theft, loss (from friend, the elements, or whatever), to see annotations and notes from groups I trust, and buy a book on the fly whenever and wherever I want? I’ll take that..This is not going to go away anytime soon.
http://www.facebook.com/bobsentell Bob Sentell

Wait, when Apple Macs make up 10 percent of the PC market, it’s a sign of good fortune for the company led by Steve Jobs. But when ebooks make up 9 percent of the book market, it’s overlooked? While, yes, dollar for dollar it is lower than what Apple accomplished, it is still a ~200% jump! Apple only accomplished a ~14% jump and fanboys everywhere rejoiced.

Am I the only one who sees this clearly contradictory style of reporting almost identical news within a two day period of time? How would this same story have been handled if it was “Apple hits 9% market-share on nearly 200% growth”?
http://twitter.com/TheCitrusLens The CitrusLens

i think this is going to be the future, the numbers only increasing exponetially every year
Anonymous

e books are in their infancy. 9% of the market is pretty good for something that has only really taken off in the last 3-4 years or so. Lets see what happens in 2 years and then we will know if you are right, or not.
Anonymous

I am with you. I am holding approx 1,000 books in the palm of my hand right now. I need a room approx 10′ x 20′ to do the same with DTB’s. e books are in their infancy. 9% of the market is pretty good for something that has only really taken off in the last 3-4 years or so.