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Amazon eBooks Outsell Hardcovers in Q2

submitted on July 21, 2010 by HouTex in "Stores / Merchants"

Monday July 19, 2010 was a day for the history books — if those will even exist in the future.

Amazon.com, one of the nation’s largest booksellers, announced Monday that for the last three months, sales of books for its e-reader, the Kindle, outnumbered sales of hardcover books.

In that time, Amazon said, it sold 143 Kindle books for every 100 hardcover books, including hardcovers for which there is no Kindle edition.

Predictions are that within a decade, fewer than 25 percent of all books sold will be print versions. The figures do not include the free Kindle books available. Amazon does not specify how paperback sales compare with e-book sales, but paperback sales are thought to still outnumber e-books.

Sales were apparently not affected by the release of the Apple iPad and its associated ebook store during the same period.

The shift at Amazon is “astonishing when you consider that we’ve been selling hardcover books for 15 years, and Kindle books for 33 months,” the chief executive, Jeffrey P. Bezos, said in a statement.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07......html?_r=1

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Posted by pablos17 on July 21, 2010

[reply]

Now maybe we can really stop killing so many trees. If only I could convince some lawyers at my firm to stop printing anything and everything then we could do some more good for the planet.

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Posted by Solstice on July 21, 2010

[reply]

Thats just it. I love the "green" idea behind the e-book, but I've always wondered if its really green long term? I'm really not entirely sure. You can regrow a tree, but you can't regrow oil.

A paper book can last 2+ generations if its taken care of properly, and it can be read multiple times, never having to re-download it. (Every download is fossil fuel being spent.)

However, a e-reader must be charged regularly, requiring fossil fuels to consistently be burned to allow you to read that book. (This issue could be offset with a solar charger.) However, unlike an regular book, eventually the battery will wear down requiring replacement, and/or the unit will malfunction requiring you to purchase a new one. (Each battery and unit requiring that more fossil fuel be spent.) If you take care of book properly, it will never break.

I read about two personal interest books per month, so I'm left wondering when does it become worth getting the e-reader in the "green" sense, monetary expenditure aside.

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