Just how popular are e-books? Amazon announced Thursday that its customers are now purchasing more Kindle books than print books."Customers are now choosing Kindle books more often than print books. We had high hopes that this would happen eventually, but we never imagined it would happen this quickly—we've been selling print books for 15 years and Kindle books for less than four years," Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO, said in a statement.
In July 2010, Amazon announced that sales of electronic books for its Kindle e-book reader surpassed sales of hardcover books on the site. Six months later, sales of Kindle books surpassed that of paperbacks. Now, customers are downloading Kindle books more than hardcovers and paperbacks combined.
Since April 1, for example, Amazon has sold 105 Kindle books for every 100 print books purchased. Amazon did not count free Kindle books in its tally; if it did, that would make the number even higher, the company said.
Kindle sales have helped create Amazon's fastest year-over-year growth for Amazon's U.S. book business, in units and dollars, in more than a decade. So far, Amazon has sold three times as many Kindle books in 2011 as it did during the same period in 2010.
Bezos also championed its latest Kindle device, the $114 ad-supported Kindle with Special Offers. For $25 less than its standard Kindle device, the Special Offers e-reader features advertisements and deals as its screen saver and on the bottom of its home screen. Read More
