E-Book sales outstripping hardcovers
Amazon sold 180 ebooks for every 100 hardbacks last month.
But publishers said it is still too early to gauge for the entire industry whether the growth of e-books is cannibalizing sales of paperback books, a huge and crucial market.
Publishers had better get on the ball or they will find themselves in a similar situation as the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) when they found they were out in the cold on the CD vs. MP3 debate. I understand the ripping a CD to MP3 is a different situation than converting a hardback book to an ebook. But, honestly, ebook DRM is a joke, and there is already a plethora of content (both legal and otherwise) available on the Internet.
Wake up publishers! Stop jerking us around with your pricing/availability games. If you want to control the game, you are going to have to get up to speed real soon. Otherwise, Apple and Amazon will control it for you.
Another interesting tidbit for you “iPad is the Kindle-killer” folks out there:
Of the 1.14 million James Patterson e-books sold as of July 6, nearly 868,000 were from Amazon.
Read: Amazon Says E-Book Sales Outpace Hardcovers – WSJ