Sunday, May 29, 2011

Paperback Sales versus E-book Sales in the Past Seven Months

With the end of May almost here, I sat down and took a quick look at my sales figures in the past few months, not in terms of income, but in terms of total books sold, both POD paperbacks and e-books (Kindle Books). The totals startled me a little bit and are indicative of the current trends in the publishing industry.

Starting with the month of November, 2010, and finishing with the month of May, 2011, I have sold 623 paperback books on Amazon (these numbers do not include Expanded Distribution Channel sales or specialty retailers). During the same time period I have sold 291 Kindle books. Please note as well, my first Kindle title went on sale in November and only sold 3 copies. The two totals combined indicate I have sold 914 total books during the past seven months. The 291 Kindle books account for roughly one third of my total sales.

The reason I compared sales from November of 2010 through May of 2011 is because I did not start selling Kindle books until November of 2010.

The Publishing Maven posted about ebooks making up such a large portion of the book market currently, basing her post on a recent article in Forbes Magazine. Joel Friedlander has been writing and commenting a great deal about ebooks lately at his blog, The Book Designer.

The lesson to be drawn from these sales figures, at least for me, is in the future, every edition of a new book I release will have at a minimum a POD paperback version and a Kindle edition of the title. Ebooks are here to stay but so, it would appear, are paperback books, at least for a few years longer.

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