An explosion in e-books

I saw this tidbit via Shelf Awareness, which cited Crain’s New York and iReaderReview.com as the sources:

…at Random House, “September 2009 sales (of Kindle e-books) were $22.6 million–a huge increase from a year ago when they were just $2.9 million. The Lost Symbol was a huge part with 100,000 e-book sales in its first week out (5% of total sales). In first half of 2009, Random House Kindle e-book revenue grew 400% from a year ago.”

Usually the e-book numbers are shown only as a percentage, which can be misleading when talking about actual money spent/made. But 2.9 vs. 22.6 million is a big, well-measured jump.

My favorite conclusion from iReaderReview and Shelf Awareness:

The impact of holiday e-book sales offers a “huge opportunity for new companies to become successful publishers.”

I wonder if these new publishing companies will look anything like the ones we see today.

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2 Responses to “An explosion in e-books”


  1. 1 Wylie November 23, 2009 at 7:25 pm

    Funny… though I’ve been epublished myself, I STILL prefer to read books in print (Don’t hate me!!) There’s just something wonderful about cracking open the pages, feeling the weight of a book in my hands, the smell of the paper and ink.
    I also love the feeling of seeing my bookshelves stacked high with everything from history books to romance and everything in between — including the entire Nancy Drew collection.
    That said, if Santa would like to put a Kindle under my tree, I won’t complain 😀

    • 2 Stacy Boyd December 3, 2009 at 1:26 pm

      Wylie,

      I know exactly what you mean. I read on my laptop nearly as much as I do in print form, but there is absolutely no smell more seductive than that of a roomful of books–in libraries, used book stores, my aunt’s old back-room collection (where I first discovered Rosemary Rogers). And my three-year-old feels the same. He has as much fun stacking and re-organizing the books littering our apartment as he does “reading” them.


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I work as an editor at Harlequin, but the posts on this site are all mine and don’t represent my employer's positions, strategies or opinions.
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