Paperback Sales Plummet by 25% as E-Readers Become Increasingly Popular

[Maura]

According to a report in the Daily Mail, e-readers such as the iPad Amazon’s Kindle are becoming so popular that they are starting to affect sales of paperback books, or so it would seem judging by new sales figures from Nielsen BookScan, which show sales of paperback books down by 25% year-on-year, with only 11.3 million paperback books being sold in the first three months of 2012, as opposed to 14.9 million sold in the same period in 2011. In general, The Mail reports, total book sales have fallen by approximately 11%, although sales of hardback fiction books have stayed stable at around 1.2 million, mainly because people still like to collect them. Author G.P. Taylor told The Mail: “I believe we are seeing the death of the paperback and I would say that by 2012 it will be a little seen commodity.†Meanwhile, publishing magazine The Bookseller said that one in eight adult fiction books purchased is a digital version. One example of the e-book boom is the fact that when the Harry Potter books were made available in digital form for the first time last week, J.K. Rowling’s website raked in £1 million in just a few days, with around £231 being spent per minute on Potter e-books on the website.

Source: Death of the paperback in e-reader revolution: Sales drop by 25% in a year | Mail Online

 

[Hayles66]

Sad day to be sure but I'm guilty of this myself. I only buy and read ebooks now on my kindle and iBooks apps. It's the future.

Sent from my new iPad using iPF

 

[curly5079]

Agreed. Bought, delivered, and reading the new book on my iPad inside 1 minute

 

[Kaykaykay]

I still buy paperbacks from time to time. Depends on whether it's available digitally, whether it's something I think I'll read only once and whether digital is more expensive.

I buy some university-press books that aren't available digitally, for instance. And I'm not paying more for an ebook I'll read only once if a paperback mystery is a standard 25% off at Target, for instance.

No big deal to me if paperbacks disappear, because if they don't exist, the books will still be available to me digitally.

Might suck for people who aren't technical and maybe can't afford hardware or ebooks, because borrowed and cheap used paperbacks are so readily available now to people with limited money.