Seattle (ip-192.com): Digital books are taking off: Amazon.com says that it is selling 80 percent downloaded books than hardcovers, based on sales in the last month. This includes books sold for the Kindle electronic reader and competing formats. Amazon says that it has sold over 500,000 books from 5 authors: James B. Patterson, Stieg Larsson, Charlaine Harris, Stephenie Meyer, and Nora Roberts.
"We've reached a tipping point with the new price of Kindle," said Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon. "The growth rate of Kindle device unit sales has tripled since we lowered the price from $259 to $189. Amazon.com customers now purchase more Kindle books than hardcover books - astonishing when you consider that we've been selling hardcover books for 15 years, and Kindle books for 33 months."
However, paperback books are still outselling hardbacks, and they were not included in the statement. Amazon said that it sold 143 electronic books for every 100 hardcover books in the full second quarter of 2010.
About 630,000 e-books are currently available for sale on Amazon.com, and roughly 80 percent are priced at $9.99 or less.
Thousands of titles are available as a free download.
Gemini's Amazon Kindle Store
Photo: www.imagine-your-world.com
[...] quarter of 2010, saying it sold 140 e-books for every 100 hardcover books (ip-192.com reported here.) Photo: Laeschke // [...]