Question
What percentage of the book industry is dominated by eBooks (Kindle, iPad editions, etc.) as opposed to the share of printed?
Answer
This may help
http://www.teleread.com/paul-bib...
In addition to the excellent answers by Chris Jensen and Julito Varela, I'll add a couple of points:
http://www.teleread.com/paul-bib...
In addition to the excellent answers by Chris Jensen and Julito Varela, I'll add a couple of points:
- Amazon is only one channel, but it is definitely the most important channel in terms of both trend-setting and for many categories of books, volume. Amazon reported early this year that Kindle sales had overtaken paperback and hardcover sales (in number of units, which is much more meaningful at this stage of the industry's evolution than revenue share).
- The data from Chris covers the big publishers, and as he notes, that leaves out the independent and self-publishing categories. Data from Bowker shows that the latter have significantly exceeded the big publishers in terms of number of titles, and growth rate in number of titles. This of course means little in terms of revenue or units shipped (since one Harry Potter can wash out a million indy titles), but it is is a strong indicator of where the future is headed. As the market fragments and goes long-tail, the big publishers will turn into something like free-to-air TV channels, with the rest being like cable channels. Market dynamics will shift.
- Finally, a personal data point that may be illustrative. I self-published my book and had it out in paperback for 6 months before doing the ebook. In the first month, ebook sales have been more than double the paperback sales (partly because of the cost difference of course, since my ebook is about half the cost of my paperback) but the fact that supply/demand curve behaves so obviously in accordance with theory tells you that penetration of ebook reader devices is no longer the bottleneck.