USA Today boasts a prestigious bestseller list for new books and it’s often a milestone for authors to reach multiple weeks at the top of the rankings. But after the holiday e-reader gift giving when the industry saw an expected spike in ebook sales to go with those new devices, USA Today’s list contained an unprecedented number of ebooks that were actually faring better than their print editions in the marketplace.
Some estimates have come in that Amazon sold nearly 5 million Kindle Fire tablets between its November release and Christmas, while Barnes and Noble sold approximately 2 million Nook tablets in roughly that same time period. The boom in ebook sales could very obviously be attributed to consumers desire for digital content for their new devices. But with the near doubling of ebook sales to comprise twenty percent of the book market, leaving still a massive eighty percent of book sales falling under the realm of print editions, how are ebooks often faring better than print on the bestseller lists?
Since the holidays, forty-two of the top fifty titles on the USA Today bestseller list sold more ebook editions than print, an increase since the previous ebook-vs-print listing of July when only twenty-five of the top fifty were outselling in ebook format. Source: USAToday
With the options available to reading consumers, this trend might slow down now that the e-readers have been unwrapped but whether or not it reverses remains to be seen. Unlike the critics who argue that e-reading still isn’t powerful enough to change the publishing industry as a whole, for now the reading public is proving that digital reading is a recognized power player in terms of overall sales.
Mercy Pilkington is a Senior Editor for Good e-Reader. She is also the CEO and founder of a hybrid publishing and consulting company.
