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Hachette recently announced that James Patterson had sold 1.14 million e-books to date, the first author to top the one million e-book sales list. Of those, 867,881 were Kindle books.
Five authors- Charlaine Harris, Stieg Larsson, Stephenie Meyer, James Patterson and Nora Roberts, have each sold more than 500,000 Kindle books, according to Amazon. "Over the past three months for every 100 hardcover books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 143 Kindle books. Over the past month, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 180 Kindle books."
As of July, there were 630,000 titles in the Kindle Store and 510,000 of those were priced at $9.99 or less, which means that only about 20 percent of total Kindle books available for sale were priced higher than $10. Over 1.8 million free, out-of-copyright, pre-1923 books are also available to read on Kindle.
"We've reached a tipping point with the new price of Kindle, the growth rate of Kindle device unit sales has tripled since we lowered the price from $259 to $189," said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. "In addition, even while our hardcover sales continue to grow, the Kindle format has now overtaken the hardcover format. Amazon.com customers now purchase more Kindle books than hardcover books, astonishing when you consider that we've been selling hardcover books for 15 years, and Kindle books for 33 months."
Still, the hardback comparison figure doesn't necessarily mean the end is near for paper books. Amazon said its hardback book unit sales also continued to increase. Moreover, while Amazon has become one of the largest booksellers in the U.S., it still attracts an online audience that is more inclined to be early adopters of new reading technology.
Source: Christian Writing Today
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