Amazon are selling more eBooks for their Kindle e-readers than paperbacks and hardbacks combined.
Amazon built their business by delivering books and CDs to customers doors for the best price. Last year saw digital music outsell CDs, and 2012 has seen Amazon selling more Kindle eBooks in the UK than paperbacks and hardbacks combined for the first time – literature has finally gone digital.
British Kindle readers are apparently buying four times as many books as they were prior to owning a Kindle, although it may simply be that they are now buying all their books from Amazon due to the ease and integration of the Kindle’s Amazon bookshop.
The Kindle became a best-seller on Amazon as soon as it was made available as people appreciated the possibilities of having a single device that can hold thousands of books with a battery that last a month or more. The convenience of the device has been championed, with an Amazon spokesperson claiming that there has been “a love of a reading and a renaissance as a result of Kindle being launched.”
Another interesting factor in the Kindle book sales figures is how well independent authors have done without the backing of the publishing industry – three of the top ten most popular Kindle authors of 2012 so far were independent and self-published through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing – Nick Spalding, Katia Lief, and Kerry Wilkinson
