The Association of American Publishers has issued a new report that has given us an indication on the growth of ebooks during the last year. In 2012, digital books have accounted for nearly 1/4 of the total books sold. This is a fairly large jump from 2011, when ebooks only had 17% of the entire market and a paltry 3% in 2009.
The entire US book industry is thought to have sold over $27.2 billion dollars worth of books in 2012. This means that electronic books have garnered a respectable $1.25 billion dollars. This report covers not only fiction but also children’s, k12 and religious books.
These figures obviously is not totally indicative of the finalized sales patterns for ebooks, but it is about as close as we can get. American publishers often do not divulge their exact sales figures, because unlike the UK, they are not mandated to do so. Still, you can see the growing trend in ebooks. Currently, major publishers like Penguin are seeing 35% of their entire US bookselling revenue stemming from ebooks.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
