E-books are more and more popular

(written by lawrence krubner, however indented passages are often quotes). You can contact lawrence at: lawrence@krubner.com, or follow me on Twitter.

I have a novel I’d like to publish, so e-books are interesting to me. Apparently it is really easy to publish them through Amazon, and Amazon let’s you keep 70% of the money, which seems like a good deal.

The state of the book is in constant danger. The novel is constantly dying, and there is a fear that the publishing industry in general is maybe doomed. But if there’s one sector of the publishing industry that’s alive and well, it’s e-books. According to data released this week by the Association of American Publishers (AAP), e-book sales continued a steady rise in 2013.

Data around book sales and reading is notoriously muddy. There is no comprehensive data collected and published on how many books are sold in the United States, print, e-book, or combined. Major retailers, like Barnes & Noble and Amazon, release their sales figures for print books, but do not share how many e-books they are selling.

AAP reports the revenue made by major book publishers. For e-books, since there is almost no overhead as there is with physical books (for covers, and printing, and shipping) the revenue reported is approximately equal to the e-books sold.

E-books have come to prominence quickly in the book publishing world. Publishers started reporting data on e-books in 2008, one year after the release of the first Amazon Kindle. In 2008, e-books were still in their nascent phase. They were so new, they were still outsold by audiobooks.

The massive jump in electronic book sales from 2008 to 2013 is due, at least in part, to the rise in popularity of e-readers, like the Amazon Kindle, and tablet computers. Since 2007, e-reader design has improved. The models got thinner, could hold more books, and could download books from anywhere. The newer models will even let you read in the dark.

The Pew Research Center started collecting data on e-readers in 2010 when Apple released the first generation of the iPad and tablets started to take off. Pewfound that while 85% of Americans owned a cell phone, only 5% of Americans owned an e-reader and 4% owned a tablet. With tablet computers rising, and e-readers getting thinner and thinner, e-book sales skyrocketed. In the first six months of 2011, e-reader ownership doubled.

Today, 90% of Americans own a cellphone, 32% own an e-reader, and 42% own a tablet. This is important because most e-book consumption happens on those two devices. More than 50% of readers said that they read e-books on tablets or e-readers.

Post external references

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    http://www.vox.com/2014/6/27/5849354/e-books-will-save-the-publishing-industry
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