Let’s start with eMarketer’s take on the Association of American Publishers’ figures on ebook sales. These numbers haven’t been publicized much – perhaps since Publishers would rather see ebooks and ereaders die.
eBook Sales nearly tripled from 2008 to 2009
Here’s what the numbers from AAP show -
eBook Sales almost Triple in 2009
The article asks whether paid content will put publishing back in the black and also looks at some newspaper subscription rates.
The numbers that really stand out for me are -
- The growth in sales for AAP Publishers – $25.2 million in 2006, $31.7 million in 2007, $61.3 million in 2008 (almost a doubling in the first year of ereader availability), and $169.5 million in 2009 (almost a tripling in the second year of eReader availability).
- In 2 years we’ve seen ebook sales for AAP Publishers increase 5.3 times. The fact that Publishers are still trying to kill eBooks is inexplicable.
If we assume there are somewhere between 2 and 5 million eReaders in circulation in the US there’s still a lot of room for ebook sales to grow. We’ve also only recently seen Kindle for PC and Kindle for Blackberry. eBooks are arguably the biggest opportunity for Publishers and Authors. It’s time they were treated like first class citizens of the Publishing World.
Dell advertising Kindle for their Streak Tablet = Kindle for Android
JK on the run points out that the leaked Dell Streak documents include an image talking about all the Amazon services supported by the Streak. The most interesting (and the one mentioned first) are Kindle ‘book reader’ applications.
That couldn’t mean anything other than Kindle for Android, could it?
Actually the image at Engadget clearly shows the Kindle logo and since Streak runs Android Kindle for Android is pretty much guaranteed. There still isn’t a ship date for the 5″ Dell Streak but you have to think it’ll be arriving within a few months of the April 5th launch of the iPad.
A List Apart talks Web Standards for ebooks
Don’t really understand website design or ebook design – However, it’s easy to tell the article is well thought out and if it leads to ebooks that are as well formatted and as pretty as A List Apart itself that’d be wonderful.
There are a few things that were very interesting -
- The realization that A List Apart is right – both Kindle format and ePub have html at their heart.
- That a site exists that promotes excellent ebook design – ePub Zen Garden.
- The emphasis on separation of content and structure. This makes a lot of sense for websites. Haven’t thought about how it would apply to ebooks. Perhaps the post on formless content and definite content applies here.
The most interesting thought was that whatever decisions we make now constrain us in ways we don’t understand in the future. The jump to ePub as the one shared format to fight the Kindle is one of these – we’re choosing ePub because it’s open and yet there are a lot more reasons to consider before we anoint a particular format as the one to take us into the future of reading.
Is there a metric other than profit we should be praising?
This article by GalleyCat is perhaps the strangest one this year – How one writer earned 100,000 downloads of a free ebook.
How do you earn a free download? Isn’t this the sort of eyeballs and pageviews madness we had during the Internet Boom?
Sales of Books and Profits from Books are the key metrics. Above all else profit is the main thing we should be focusing on. An author giving away 100,000 books or an author selling 100,000 books at a loss are not to be applauded. The Internet makes it easy to make bad business decisions because a lot of people believe information should be free or are happy to delay gratification for the promise of profits that may or may not materialize down the line. The Internet applauds self-sacrifice and stupidity – especially if it helps the other inhabitants.
It’s completely OK to applaud a company that gives away the first book in a series and then sees the sales for the remaining books in the series increase 2,000%. It’s not OK to applaud someone who managed to ‘earn’ 100,000 downloads of a free book.
Book Apps finally start making a dent in Top Paid Apps Charts
While the entire world seems happy to talk about meaningless things like the total number of book apps exceeding the total number of games in the App Store we have something tangible -
- There are 4 book apps in the top 100 paid apps.
- A Dr. Seuss Book Apps is at #11 – It’s the highest I’ve ever seen a paid book app go. #11 0ut of 100,000 or so paid apps (approximately) is well worth commending.
- Another Dr. Seuss Book App is at #31.
- The Seth Godin Vook is at #79.
- The LDS Scriptures Book App is at #20.
Now for some Reality – The 4 apps are all $0.99 each. For all the crowing about how well Book Apps are doing there are still only 4 in the Top 100 Paid Apps and all of them are at $1. Before we can start considering the iPhone and the iPad the future of eBooks it’d be good to see some $10 books actually make the charts.
Filed under: news Tagged: | kindle news roundup
