Amazon continues to go from strength to strength
Amazon
Although sales of paperbacks also increased Amazon is selling 15% more of its Kindle e-book format than paperbacks.
Jeff Bezos, chief executive of Amazon.com said: “We achieved two big milestones. We had our first $10bn quarter, and, after selling millions of third-generation Kindles with the new Pearl e-ink display during the quarter, Kindle books have now overtaken paperback books as the most popular format on Amazon.com.
“Last July we announced that Kindle books had passed hardcovers and predicted that Kindle would surpass paperbacks in the second quarter of this year, so this milestone has come even sooner than we expected – and it’s on top of continued growth in paperback sales.”
The end is nigh – for books! But is it?
Some pundits suggest that this spells the death knell for book sales but as shown above not only has the sales of e-books increased so has paperbacks so it may be too soon to make that prediction.
In fact, I can see a day, and it can’t come too soon for me, where when you buy a book you get both versions. There is still something to be said for holding a real book in your hand even if it is only a paperback.
With a background in the print industry, which seems generations ago now and probably is, I still like the feel of a good book and I don’t just mean the binding but the content as well. There is something satisfying about seeing it sitting on the bedside table.
But, what I like about e-books is their search ability and I’m not taking about search engines in this instance but being able to find a section, a paragraph, an idea which I know is in there but where is the problem.
It might relate more to technical or reference type books which is what I seem to read more off these days rather than novels but could prove a benefit in other areas too, possibly in education.
And, I might just be prepared to pay a little bit extra for a Kindle bundle and get both!
