Friday 20 May 2011

eBooks are easily outselling hardbacks in the UK

"In the UK, Amazon announced it had sold 242 ebooks for every 100 hardbacks since 1 April 2011. "Amazon.co.uk customers are choosing Kindle books more often than hardcovers at a rate of more than 2 to 1," said Gordon Willoughby, European director at Kindle. "This is truly astonishing when you consider that we've been selling hardcover books from Amazon.co.uk for over 13 years and Kindle books for only nine months."
A spokesman for Amazon.co.uk said the figures included sales of hardback books where no Kindle edition was available, and did not include free Kindle downloads. He said the website was not publishing comparisons between paperback sales and ebook downloads.
The UK figures represent a quicker uptake of Kindle ebooks than Amazon saw in the US, although John Howells, spokesman for Waterstone's, said its own Waterstones.com ebook sales had outstripped hardbacks for "quite a while".
"For every hardback we sell online, we sell four ebooks online," Howells said. "It doesn't really surprise us as we've been quite established as ebook sellers for some two and a half years now.""
Source:  The Guardian, 19th May 2011

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