Amazon Announces That Kindle Book Sales Are Now Bigger Than Sales Of Paperbacks

It’s not that long since Amazon announced that they were selling more Kindle books than hardback editions. They are now advising that Kindle books are even outselling paperbacks. It can only be a matter of time before Kindle book sales are higher than both hardbacks and paperbacks combined.

It has a certain air of inevitability when you think about it. Anyone who is prepared to pay over $ 100 for an e-book reader is probably going to be the type of person who reads a good number of books, surely? Of course, there will always be some book lovers who prefer reading a traditional printed book – but, over the piece, we do appear to be heading towards a scenario where e-books assume increasingly more importance in the publishing world.

There are plenty of Kindle books available for buyers to choose from. Right now there are more than 800,000 Kindle books to choose from on the Amazon website. This number is increasing daily – and there are a further 1.8 million out of copyright books which are available as free downloads. These include some classic works by authors such as Charles Dickens, Jules Verne, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Homer, Tacitus and many more.

Amazon has also made a whole host of free apps available which permit Kindle books to be read without the need for a Kindle reader. These exist for the PC, the Mac, the Apple iPad, the iPod Touch, the Blackberry smart phone and any device which runs Android. An app for the HP tablet computer is believed to be imminent. This means that users need have no fear that their Kindle may become obsolete. Additionally, each app also serves as an additional retail outlet for Amazon.

Amazon are estimated to enjoy around about a 90% share of the current e-book market. Obviously that can’t continue, and industry analysts are forecasting an approximately equal three way split between Amazon, Google and Apple by 2015. However, those are the same analysts who forecast that the launch of the Apple iPad would be the death of the Kindle, and they got that wrong didn’t they?

In point of fact, the new third generation Kindle reader is selling faster than ever. It was Amazon’s best selling product (again) during the 2010 festive sales season, and the Kindle has now been Amazon’s best selling item for eighteen months. 2011 sales forecasts have been increased from 5 million Kindles to 8 million, based upon recent sales returns. Some rationalisation of the market seems probable in the future, but there’s no evidence that the dominance of the Kindle is going to reduce in the short to medium term.

Get the facts on the Kindle 3 for yourself. It’s the future of reading – you can even play games on the Amazon Kindle – some games are even free!