E-book Sales Growing by Leaps and Bounds

This week, the Association of American Publishers (AAP) issued a press release about the dramatic rise in e-book sales compared with one year ago. The report focuses on sales stats for January 2011, but I think it’s a good reflection for what’s to come.

What struck me—though I shouldn’t be surprised—is the significant decrease in print sales. According to the AAP, adult hard cover sales dropped by 11.3%, adult trade paperback dropped by 19.7%, and mass market books fell by a whopping 30.9%. Yikes! This must be giving print publishers heart palpitations, unless they’re embracing the e-book market. E-book sales in January 2011 were up by a whopping 115.8% from January 2010.

The children’s/young adult categories weren’t hurt quite as much. Hard covers were down by only 1.9% and trade paperbacks dropped by 17.7%.

The AAP also provided stats for religious, professional and scholarly books, as well as audio books. Dollar amounts were also stated with the percentages, so if you’d like to see more, go to http://www.publishers.org/main/PressCenter/Archicves/2011_March/January2011StatsPressRelease.htm

The bottom line is that print publishers who are still hesitating to publish electronic versions of books are losing out big time. As writers, it’s important that we make sure our contracts stipulate that publishers actually commit to publishing our books electronically within a specified time period. All publishers demand electronic rights these days; we need to make sure they actually commit to this new way of buying, reading, and publishing books.

THE OPPOSITE OF DARK, http://bit.ly/i983XE
FATAL ENCRYPTION, http://tinyurl.com/ddzsxl
TAXED TO DEATH, http://tinyurl.com/czsy5n