EBook sales finally _really_ taking off?

[igorsk]

A literary agent writes:

[...]
I’m reading a ton of statements from different houses, different authors, and different genres.
I’m noticing one big change. The amount of eBooks being sold in any given accounting period has risen dramatically.
I’ve been watching this for years. Four years ago, any author that sold more than 50 books in the electronic form (in one accounting period) was blowing it away and mostly I’d only see high numbers from our SF&F authors.
Now I’m looking at titles selling 500 to 1000 copies (and certainly sometimes more) in electronic form regardless of the genre. Even this time last year the numbers were not running nearly this high.
The tectonic shift is happening and it’s all clearly spelled out on paper—although one has to wonder how long those paper statements will last…

[A Nonny Mouse]

Yes I agree, many more people are buying or trying to buy eBooks only to be driven to the *Dark Side* by the silly *geographic restrictions* imposed by Publishers to protect their excessive profits.


Wake up people!!

[bbusybookworm]

I'll say they may be taking off, but its still going to take some more time to become a little more mainstream.

Outside the US, Buying and loading content is still a pain and abit of a hit and miss. Geo Restrictions and DRM mean that people who may like to switch to Ebooks, or move completely to it can not and it does't look like it will in th near future.

As a personal example, I went looking for 8 books this week, books I heard about, or was told were intrestion. I immediately went to FW, BoB, etc to check whether they were available.

Out of those 8, only two were available as e-books. Of those two one was the same price as the HB, and the other mre then double the price Paperback. As such, While I bought one book, if more had been available, at comparable (I'm not even asking for Lower) Prices I'll probably have bought more. Now, I've forgotton, most of those names, so that even if they becoma available in the future, I'm probably not going to get them.

Untill Availability and pricing get in line, eBooks are not going to gain the meteoric rise we'll like to see.

[fugazied]

Well on the negative side, I heard buzz out loud podcast talking about it yesterday, I think ebooks are 2% of ALL book sales. So yes, growing, but such a tiny tiny piece of pie.

However, yes it's growing fast, 250%+ more sales each month than compared to the same month a year before.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by bbusybookworm

I'll say they may be taking off, but its still going to take some more time to become a little more mainstream.

Outside the US, Buying and loading content is still a pain and abit of a hit and miss. Geo Restrictions and DRM mean that people who may like to switch to Ebooks, or move completely to it can not and it does't look like it will in th near future.

As a personal example, I went looking for 8 books this week, books I heard about, or was told were intrestion. I immediately went to FW, BoB, etc to check whether they were available.

Out of those 8, only two were available as e-books. Of those two one was the same price as the HB, and the other mre then double the price Paperback. As such, While I bought one book, if more had been available, at comparable (I'm not even asking for Lower) Prices I'll probably have bought more. Now, I've forgotton, most of those names, so that even if they becoma available in the future, I'm probably not going to get them.

Untill Availability and pricing get in line, eBooks are not going to gain the meteoric rise we'll like to see.

We know that publishers are responsible for most of these restrictions. But do not forget the governments of most European countries. They want to collect 19% on all internet purchases and how can they do that if Europeans just download from the US, tax free? And in Germany, for example, you even have government mandated price fixing for books. So there definitely is more to this problem. Time for all those Europeans to write to their representatives!

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

We know that publishers are responsible for most of these restrictions. But do not forget the governments of most European countries. They want to collect 19% on all internet purchases and how can they do that if Europeans just download from the US, tax free? And in Germany, for example, you even have government mandated price fixing for books. So there definitely is more to this problem. Time for all those Europeans to write to their representatives!

Not only Germany, the Netherlands also has a fixed book price.

The worst part here is, ebooks aren't books but services. Otherwise the VAT could be lowered to 6% instead of 19%. And the other hand, because ebooks aren't books but services, that fixed book price shouldn't matter...

[neilmarr]

Whatever the tax situation, it seems to me that Kindle buyers outside the US will not only pay the high pre-reduction price for the reader but will also be stuck by Amazon with a two dollar surcharge on each book 'bought' from a Kindle bookstore with georestrictions on thousands of titles. It will sell, of course, because it'll get the same media hype it did in the US -- even though (in my opinion) better readers have been available for years in 'the rest of the world'. Neil