MOVE OVER HARDCOVERS: E-books Just Outsold You

By: Kathleen Pickering http://www.kathleenpickering.com

Before I even begin on today’s news, let me offer a superb website for the latest in breaking news for the publishing industry, called GalleyCat:

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/

Don’t go there now, because I’ll lose you here. GalleyCat is chock full of fascinating info that could capture your attention for hours—but, I need you now!  So, do copy and paste this link into your Favorites to peruse after you’ve read my fascinating info today on e-book sales outselling hardcovers for the first time in the US.

This new is from an article written by Lauren Indvik on Mashable. (Another great site for breaking news, BTW!)

Looks like e-books brought in $282.3M in the first quarter of this year (up 28.1% from last year). Adult hardcover novels earned $229.6M (up 2.7%). Adult paperbacks continued to lead at $299.8M but sales are down 10.5% from last year.

Downloaded Audio books are up 32.7% from last year selling at $25M. So, the trend is pretty clear. The flood of e-reading devices crossing the board from tablets, smartphones to dedicated e-readers have taken a bite from the paper book industry.

What did I do? I went and bought some Apple stock (better late than never). The writing is on the wall--never mind on the e-readers!

Have you gone to the dark side and traded in your hard copies for your Kindle, Nook or other e-reading device? I cherish my hard cover books and can’t imagine taking an e-reader into the tub (unless of course, it’s waterproof!) Yet, I haven’t been loyal to my paper novels, either. Here’s a page in my iPad Kindle file of books by fellow authors. I mean, really? How can we resist carrying around hundreds of books on a slim little tablet? Are paper books doomed?

Tell me what you think.

xox, Piks