I don't understand why we keep having this conversation when the answer couldn't be any more obvious...avid readers represent a minority of the population. And while avid readers represent a big chunk of book sales...many books are purchased by people who rarely buy books at all (let alone for pleasure).
When purchasing an ebook reader is as trivial as buying a pocket calculator...then you'll see a massive shift in the proportion of ebook sales vs print sales. (Also, it would be enormously helpful if ebooks could be purchased WITHOUT a credit card...afterall kids buy books too.)
The article cites a number of reasons why this could be the case.
I would also like to throw in DRM & proprietary formats. First, you are using something like a Kindle you are licensing content. If Amazon goes away, I wouldn't be surprised if your content does too. That would make me nervous if I was heavily invested in some ecosystem.
But another interesting theory, not mentioned in the article, is that there may be a difference in reading speed and comprehension between paper and screens (although I have seen conflicting data on this).
One fascinating idea from this article is that "As far as our brains are concerned, however, text is a tangible part of the physical world we inhabit."
Personally, I comprehend information much better when its in some format like PDF which is not re-flowable. But most books these days, available from Amazon or Apple, do not meet that description.
Maybe I'm an odd one, but my ideal reading device would probably be some 13" tablet that could display a whole PDF page at a time.
> [if] you are using something like a Kindle you are licensing content. If Amazon goes away, I wouldn't be surprised if your content does too.
I break DRM on all the Kindle content I buy. If I couldn't break the DRM, I wouldn't buy it.
I also try to support non-DRM books by buying them preferentially. Baen books, for instance. There are other non-DRM publishers. And no, I do /not/ share.
I have a Kindle DX for reading papers (e.g., from the ACM). I haven't tried reading conference papers on a tablet (e.g., iPad) mainly because I don't have one, and while I wonder if the experience is better, I like the fact that the Kindles don't have to be recharged every day. The fact that I can go a week or more without recharging makes them a lot more book-like to me.
One of the most interesting things to come to light in the anti-trust decision against Apple was that Amazon was happily buying bestselling eBooks from publishers for $13 and reselling them for $9. The publishers preferred the opposite: for Apple and Amazon pay them $9 and then resell the books for $13. The publishers WANTED the eBook market to slow down - they didn't want people to stop buying hardcovers from Barnes and Noble for $30 and they didn't want people thinking that a new bestselling novel was only worth $10.
Well ebooks prices are ridiculous in the first place. I only buy ebooks when the price is not fixed （bundles） and without drms. Other that that, there is so muc free stuff to download from the public domain, i dont get bored.
The DRM which genuinely vexes me is Audible, so I make a point of ripping (+++) anything I buy, because it actually makes the works difficult for me to play otherwise (it blocks output from the iPhone except in analog, so it doesn't play on my vehicle dock. I end up having to rip and put them on SD cards to play directly on the car's audio system.)
1. Most of the current e-book contents & formats (Kindle, epub, etc.) have not yet fully exploited the capabilities of the digital medium. I'd say we are not more than 30-40% (or less) there, even just considering the current level of technology.
2. Habits are hard to change. What you are most accustomed to when growing up, you tend to continue unless the advantages of change is overwhelming. Current e-book formats do not yet offer huge advantages over paper books, thus many adults keep buying paper ones. (Some advantages, like physical storage space & weight, are big, but confined to specific situations, say during travel, as mentioned in the article.)
3. New generations of kids are more and more distracted by digital interactivity and communications. I suspect the average amount of long-form reading per person in the developed world has declined over time. (Does anyone have an estimate?) Long-form narratives like paper books and current e-books cannot now hold attention of most casual readers, especially the young. Even though I did not grow up with a computer and read many books as a child, I now read quite a bit less books and many more short items on the Web (articles, blogs, forum posts, etc.).
4. Over time, when the new generation of digital natives grows up and technology progresses, e-books would gradually but surely dominate the reading market for all types of books. More importantly, popular non-fictions will be developed as a new kind of e-books, which cannot even be fully presented in the traditional narrative form. Al Gore's Our Choice [1] is just an example of the first generation's interactive e-books.
In response to (3) -- I read a LOT as a kid, too, and I also stopped as I got older. Until I got a kindle that is: now I read every day. I'm quite happy about that.
And the browser in the PaperWhite is really handy, when I'm on the go ill, often leave the tablet to home and use my kindle to read HN or The Verge.
Not a big fan of the interactive e-book paradigm in general, but it certainly has its place. long form reading is not something I anticipate going away.
I recently bought 7 books. The price difference for a PDF file was sometimes more than a real physical copy. For whatever reason I was not willing to pay even the same amount. So, into my online shopping cart went 7 print copies ... go figure.
I feel the same, but lately most ebooks I looked at were a couple of EUR cheaper than their paperback counterparts. I think the publishers/vendors are learning.
I think this is mostly price driven. The initial frenzy over Ebooks was the promise of volume - 2000 books on my Kindle! Which has faded as people realize that it would cost $200,000 to fill the Kindle, and the result is far less useful/general-purpose than a printed book (no loans, sales, requires battery, lasts shorter amount of time)
Author of the original Association of American Publishers report posted a comment to Washington Post article with rebuttal of this interpretation of their data:
As the person who produced the AAP report quoted here, I'm not given enough characters in Comments to point out the countless errors in this piece. It misunderstands our basic data and, since our reports only track current vs previous year, quotes figures that come out of nowhere and are unrecognizable. It misses the widely-reported fact that Q1 2013's overall eBook growth slowed because of the Children's/Young Adults category: The Q1 lead-up to the Hunger Games film in March 2012 drove C/YA eBooks to extraordinary triple-digit growth; minus a comparable blockbuster in Q1 2013, C/YA slowed. Adult Fiction/Non-Fiction eBooks, however, grew 14% in the same time '12-'13 period.
Also, an essential point is missed: These are not retail sales numbers but, instead, publishers' net revenues coming from all their distribution channels including Institutions (e.g. schools, libraries) and Book Fairs. That also means, for instance, that with Borders' financial troubles no longer a factor, publishers have seen their net revenue from print stabilize which, in turn, affects their overall percentage earned from eBooks in these reports.
Finally, the piece's premise that an eBook is an eBook is an eBook is wrong. Each category within consumer books - Adult Fiction/Non-Fiction, Children's/YA and Religious Presses - has moved into e-formats at different points in time. Adult F/NF was the pioneer, starting years ago, and that growth has become more consistent as it's matured. C/YA, which entered later, is now in the midst of enormous transition. Religious Presses are more newcomers to eBooks. Lumping these distinct categories together and making broad generalizations makes little sense.
We release highlights of all our reports to media (including the Post). We're happy to share. But an article based on a non-journalistic blog that itself has only second-hand information does a disservice to readers, authors and publishers.
Does it really dispute the original article about the trend in the whole medium? Mr. Sporkin analyzes single ebook categories but that doesn't change numbers for all ebooks.
It's written like a rebuttal but I read it as an addendum.
I am the author of the original blog post. I'm not sure what exactly Ms. Sporkin read, but although she accuses me of "countless errors," she doesn't actually specify any of them. The AAP numbers on e-book sales growth that I used come from AAP reports on 1st quarter book sales from 2009 to 2013. Yes, they are current year vs. previous year numbers, which is precisely how I describe them in the text and chart. And yes, they are for the overall e-book market, which seems a reasonable way to illustrate overall trends in that market. I agree, of course, that examining segments of that market would also be useful. Nick Carr
This is really interesting, because me, my partner, colleges at work and friends are all buying more ebooks than we've ever done before. All our work books are now digital and the older generations in my family all now own kindles (and use them).
> The shift from e-readers to tablets is putting a damper on e-book sales.
I didn't understand this part. Why would tablets usage reduce e-books sales if you can read e-books on your tablet all the same? If the author means the DRM issue, then it's not really the case, since there are many DRM free e-books sold already, and even with DRMed ones, DRM can be removed in most cases in order to access them on any device you want.
His point is that people will own an ebook reader or a tablet. If they own an ebook reader and they turn it on, 100% of their time will be reading a book. If they own a tablet and turn it on they have lots of options, maybe only 10% of the time they will read an ebook.
The argument hinges on the idea that people pick up tablets only so many hours of the day and then decide what to do. I think it's flimsy because using a tablet is a different act than wanting to read a book.
Yeah, I'd say if you want to read an e-book and you have a tablet - you would use your tablet for that. So I don't see how this can reduce your interest in buying e-books.
Assume you read at a constant rate, so reading for twice as long means you read twice as much. And assume you buy ebooks at the rate you read them, so when you read one ebook you buy one ebook. Hence reading for twice as long means you buy twice as much; and reading for half as long means you buy half as much.
Assume also that you take a fixed-duration journey during which you entertain yourself with your e-reader or tablet.
Time spent reading = journey length - time spent doing things other than reading.
Number of ebooks you buy = reading speed constant * time spent reading
So the relation is:
Number of ebooks you buy = reading speed constant * (journey length - time spent doing things other than reading)
> And assume you buy ebooks at the rate you read them, so when you read one ebook you buy one ebook.
Not in my case at least. I buy e-books irregularly, only when I need one, or interested in particular one and etc. I don't buy just for the sake of buying another one. Also, if there is a sale on something, you can buy it to read in the future, just because there is a good deal. So I don't think constant buying rate for e-books which is equal to the rate of reading is a good general assumption.
Personally I'm still on paper books, but I can't remember a time when I didn't have at least one book I was reading, and usually more than one waiting to be read. I regulate my book purchasing to stop the unread book stack getting out of hand. So in my case buying rate approximately equals reading rate.
I guess it depends on how long it takes you to read things, and how easily you can find things you want to read :)
"Yeah, I'd say if you want to read an e-book and you have a tablet - you would use your tablet for that."
No. You would buy a hard copy or a real e-reader so that you could actually read it. Tablets are just terrible for book-reading and apple killed the e-book market with the release of the tablet. Hopefully someday it will recover, but after spending so much money on a toy few are eager to buy a real e-reader.
No idea, since I never had a dedicated e-reader. I prefer a general purpose tablet which can be used as e-reader in addition and also can run free software without any DRM to begin with. What benefits does dedicated e-reader have?
A screen that is suitable for reading books. Battery life that is measured in months instead of hours.
Those are the only benefits I can think of. But they both make and break the e-book experience. Reading an e-book on a tablet? Wouldn't cross my mind, ever. I'd much rather buy the book. Read an e-book on a e-reader? Yes, please - I'll gladly pay more than the book costs if I have to (which I do a lot of the times).
I have several problems with this. You can't carry many books with you, and you need too much room to store them. If I really really need something that I read quite regularly, then sure, I'd buy a paper book. But in most cases I'd prefer a digital book, and I have no problems with reading it on a tablet. May be there are DRM-free hackable e-readers out there, but I didn't research this.
While I agree with you completely I just don't consider reading on a tablet an option.
Yes, DRM is an issue. Personally, when paying about the same or more for a DRM-e-book than for the real thing I consider it fair game and morally acceptable for me to strip the DRM (no one can claim that I'm getting a cheaper version because of DRM when the DRM crap costs more than a physical book).
Currently this is childs play so I'm gambling somewhat on that this won't change or my e-reader won't be able to new books from certain places.
Besides, I have lot's of e-books in various formats (like DjVu, PDF, ePUB, fb2 and etc.), and I doubt e-readers support them all. Having a dedicated e-rader for each format is not an option. General purpose tablet handles such cases much better.
About "criminality" of breaking DRM, this nonsense is really annoying. More people should support campaigns like this one: http://fixthedmca.org
I don't agree that tablets are terrible for e-reading. I love reading on my iPad, and hate my e-ink reader. The page refresh times are terrible in e-ink, they really slow me down and are disruptive.
There are DRM-free e-books but most aren't. The dominant e-book providers use DRM. That's why you need specific software to read e-books such as iBooks (soon to be available on the Mac, that wouldn't be necessary without DRM!), Kindle and Adobe's DRM-infested e-book reading app.
DRM can be removed in theory but most users won't make it through Calibre and the necessary scripts. In addition, in many countries, removing DRM is illegal, and in almost all countries, offering software, knowledge etc. on removing DRM even for legal purposes such as personal use is illegal. Removing DRM is therefore not an approach compatible with a mass market.
> DRM can be removed in theory but most users won't make it through Calibre and the necessary scripts.
I really hate Calibre, and I can't understand why someone hasn't forked it and released a limited set of tools just for DRM stripping. Obviously this is legally difficult but certainly do-able.
> In addition, in many countries, removing DRM is illegal,
It's weird that I am committing a criminal offence if I buy a DRMd ebook and rip it to a format I can use, but I'm not committing a criminal offence if I just download a DRM-free version of the same book.
The scripts are typically not tied to Calibre. Just execute them with command line arguments instead.
Of course that doesn't change anything legally but technically making a simple "GUI" to de-drm ebooks is something that any high-level programmer could do in a few minutes.
> In addition, in many countries, removing DRM is illegal, and in almost all countries, offering software, knowledge etc. on removing DRM even for legal purposes such as personal use is illegal.
It's "illegal" while it shouldn't be, since it bans fair use (format/device shifting). So in practice people simply ignore nonsensical "laws" like these, since they "place unrealistic demands on reality" (the way Cory Doctorow phrased it). So removing DRM should be compatible with mass market no matter how many nonsensical laws will try to prevent it and tools to remove DRM are distributed through services hosted in countries which don't have such nonsense like DMCA 1201. It applies even to such elementary things like libdvdcss which one needs to play DVDs on Linux.
O'Reilly sells e-books in multiple formats, and the e-books they sell on their site are all DRM-free. The retail price at oreilly.com is higher than at Amazon, but discount codes are easy to find. For example, authors are given cards to hand out with the discount code AUTHD printed on them.
I actually find myself buying more and more ebooks lately. I find it really convenient for various reasons, including Whispersync (which is quite useful). Also I travel a lot and am in the process of finishing multiple books, so it's obviously convenient to not have to carry giant books around.
I think a lot of factors are influencing this trend, but I don't buy that DRM is the problem. As rude as it may sound, I doubt most of the general public even knows what DRM is. Well, the data itself shows that the majority of consumer book sales are going to paper, so that argument may be moot anyway.
Newer generations probably won't purchase nearly as many paper books (or digital, even) as older generations. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out. The market will probably shrink and be taken over by short-form work designed for tablets and e-readers.
I am not surprised. The quality of a majority of the e-books (especially those found on the Kindle) are horrible! I really can't see people being prepared to pay money for poor type-setting and layout.
I am forced to agree. Recently I was looking to buy a few books and the reviews had a recurring theme: The e-books had a lot of typesetting, grammatical issues etc. while the print books were fine. I bought printed copies for all of them.
This gives the impression that the publishers don't give the e-books as much priority as the print editions. Given this fact, I don't see how they can complain if e-book sales are hitting a plateau.
Are they factoring indie sales into these numbers?
Large media producers of all stripes are notorious for conflating their sales with all sales. That makes for a particularly egregious practice here, where indies may account for 30-40% or more of sales.
I have a data point which supports the thesis, at least in the torso and tail. I have a published two books within the last 16 months. For the first one, published in early 2012, the Kindle sales were usually 2x to 3x that of the print sales.
This held steady until around November of last year, and then suddenly declined. Today print sales are nearly 2x that of the Kindle sales.
The important data point is that the Amazon sales ranks of both have remained steady.
This article only looks at sales in ebooks from publishers. It does not look at independent sales figures, which make up a majority of the ebook market.
54 comments
[ 7.5 ms ] story [ 2223 ms ] threadWhen purchasing an ebook reader is as trivial as buying a pocket calculator...then you'll see a massive shift in the proportion of ebook sales vs print sales. (Also, it would be enormously helpful if ebooks could be purchased WITHOUT a credit card...afterall kids buy books too.)
I would also like to throw in DRM & proprietary formats. First, you are using something like a Kindle you are licensing content. If Amazon goes away, I wouldn't be surprised if your content does too. That would make me nervous if I was heavily invested in some ecosystem.
But another interesting theory, not mentioned in the article, is that there may be a difference in reading speed and comprehension between paper and screens (although I have seen conflicting data on this).
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=reading-pap...
One fascinating idea from this article is that "As far as our brains are concerned, however, text is a tangible part of the physical world we inhabit."
Personally, I comprehend information much better when its in some format like PDF which is not re-flowable. But most books these days, available from Amazon or Apple, do not meet that description.
Maybe I'm an odd one, but my ideal reading device would probably be some 13" tablet that could display a whole PDF page at a time.
I break DRM on all the Kindle content I buy. If I couldn't break the DRM, I wouldn't buy it.
I also try to support non-DRM books by buying them preferentially. Baen books, for instance. There are other non-DRM publishers. And no, I do /not/ share.
I have a Kindle DX for reading papers (e.g., from the ACM). I haven't tried reading conference papers on a tablet (e.g., iPad) mainly because I don't have one, and while I wonder if the experience is better, I like the fact that the Kindles don't have to be recharged every day. The fact that I can go a week or more without recharging makes them a lot more book-like to me.
And i still buy physical books, too.
2. Habits are hard to change. What you are most accustomed to when growing up, you tend to continue unless the advantages of change is overwhelming. Current e-book formats do not yet offer huge advantages over paper books, thus many adults keep buying paper ones. (Some advantages, like physical storage space & weight, are big, but confined to specific situations, say during travel, as mentioned in the article.)
3. New generations of kids are more and more distracted by digital interactivity and communications. I suspect the average amount of long-form reading per person in the developed world has declined over time. (Does anyone have an estimate?) Long-form narratives like paper books and current e-books cannot now hold attention of most casual readers, especially the young. Even though I did not grow up with a computer and read many books as a child, I now read quite a bit less books and many more short items on the Web (articles, blogs, forum posts, etc.).
4. Over time, when the new generation of digital natives grows up and technology progresses, e-books would gradually but surely dominate the reading market for all types of books. More importantly, popular non-fictions will be developed as a new kind of e-books, which cannot even be fully presented in the traditional narrative form. Al Gore's Our Choice [1] is just an example of the first generation's interactive e-books.
[1] http://pushpoppress.com/ourchoice/
And the browser in the PaperWhite is really handy, when I'm on the go ill, often leave the tablet to home and use my kindle to read HN or The Verge.
Just a random anecdote :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1sjRD7NSec#t=3m57s
So ebooks only growing at 5% with 25% market share surprises me. At that rate it will take ebooks 10 years to draw even with print:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Solve%5B0.25+*+1.05%5En...
As the person who produced the AAP report quoted here, I'm not given enough characters in Comments to point out the countless errors in this piece. It misunderstands our basic data and, since our reports only track current vs previous year, quotes figures that come out of nowhere and are unrecognizable. It misses the widely-reported fact that Q1 2013's overall eBook growth slowed because of the Children's/Young Adults category: The Q1 lead-up to the Hunger Games film in March 2012 drove C/YA eBooks to extraordinary triple-digit growth; minus a comparable blockbuster in Q1 2013, C/YA slowed. Adult Fiction/Non-Fiction eBooks, however, grew 14% in the same time '12-'13 period.
Also, an essential point is missed: These are not retail sales numbers but, instead, publishers' net revenues coming from all their distribution channels including Institutions (e.g. schools, libraries) and Book Fairs. That also means, for instance, that with Borders' financial troubles no longer a factor, publishers have seen their net revenue from print stabilize which, in turn, affects their overall percentage earned from eBooks in these reports.
Finally, the piece's premise that an eBook is an eBook is an eBook is wrong. Each category within consumer books - Adult Fiction/Non-Fiction, Children's/YA and Religious Presses - has moved into e-formats at different points in time. Adult F/NF was the pioneer, starting years ago, and that growth has become more consistent as it's matured. C/YA, which entered later, is now in the midst of enormous transition. Religious Presses are more newcomers to eBooks. Lumping these distinct categories together and making broad generalizations makes little sense.
We release highlights of all our reports to media (including the Post). We're happy to share. But an article based on a non-journalistic blog that itself has only second-hand information does a disservice to readers, authors and publishers.
Andi Sporkin Association of American Publishers
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/08/e...
It's written like a rebuttal but I read it as an addendum.
I am the author of the original blog post. I'm not sure what exactly Ms. Sporkin read, but although she accuses me of "countless errors," she doesn't actually specify any of them. The AAP numbers on e-book sales growth that I used come from AAP reports on 1st quarter book sales from 2009 to 2013. Yes, they are current year vs. previous year numbers, which is precisely how I describe them in the text and chart. And yes, they are for the overall e-book market, which seems a reasonable way to illustrate overall trends in that market. I agree, of course, that examining segments of that market would also be useful. Nick Carr
I didn't understand this part. Why would tablets usage reduce e-books sales if you can read e-books on your tablet all the same? If the author means the DRM issue, then it's not really the case, since there are many DRM free e-books sold already, and even with DRMed ones, DRM can be removed in most cases in order to access them on any device you want.
The argument hinges on the idea that people pick up tablets only so many hours of the day and then decide what to do. I think it's flimsy because using a tablet is a different act than wanting to read a book.
Assume also that you take a fixed-duration journey during which you entertain yourself with your e-reader or tablet.
Time spent reading = journey length - time spent doing things other than reading. Number of ebooks you buy = reading speed constant * time spent reading
So the relation is:
Number of ebooks you buy = reading speed constant * (journey length - time spent doing things other than reading)
Does this clarify things?
Not in my case at least. I buy e-books irregularly, only when I need one, or interested in particular one and etc. I don't buy just for the sake of buying another one. Also, if there is a sale on something, you can buy it to read in the future, just because there is a good deal. So I don't think constant buying rate for e-books which is equal to the rate of reading is a good general assumption.
I guess it depends on how long it takes you to read things, and how easily you can find things you want to read :)
No. You would buy a hard copy or a real e-reader so that you could actually read it. Tablets are just terrible for book-reading and apple killed the e-book market with the release of the tablet. Hopefully someday it will recover, but after spending so much money on a toy few are eager to buy a real e-reader.
No idea, since I never had a dedicated e-reader. I prefer a general purpose tablet which can be used as e-reader in addition and also can run free software without any DRM to begin with. What benefits does dedicated e-reader have?
Those are the only benefits I can think of. But they both make and break the e-book experience. Reading an e-book on a tablet? Wouldn't cross my mind, ever. I'd much rather buy the book. Read an e-book on a e-reader? Yes, please - I'll gladly pay more than the book costs if I have to (which I do a lot of the times).
I have several problems with this. You can't carry many books with you, and you need too much room to store them. If I really really need something that I read quite regularly, then sure, I'd buy a paper book. But in most cases I'd prefer a digital book, and I have no problems with reading it on a tablet. May be there are DRM-free hackable e-readers out there, but I didn't research this.
Yes, DRM is an issue. Personally, when paying about the same or more for a DRM-e-book than for the real thing I consider it fair game and morally acceptable for me to strip the DRM (no one can claim that I'm getting a cheaper version because of DRM when the DRM crap costs more than a physical book).
Currently this is childs play so I'm gambling somewhat on that this won't change or my e-reader won't be able to new books from certain places.
Of course, this makes me a criminal.
About "criminality" of breaking DRM, this nonsense is really annoying. More people should support campaigns like this one: http://fixthedmca.org
DRM can be removed in theory but most users won't make it through Calibre and the necessary scripts. In addition, in many countries, removing DRM is illegal, and in almost all countries, offering software, knowledge etc. on removing DRM even for legal purposes such as personal use is illegal. Removing DRM is therefore not an approach compatible with a mass market.
I really hate Calibre, and I can't understand why someone hasn't forked it and released a limited set of tools just for DRM stripping. Obviously this is legally difficult but certainly do-able.
> In addition, in many countries, removing DRM is illegal,
It's weird that I am committing a criminal offence if I buy a DRMd ebook and rip it to a format I can use, but I'm not committing a criminal offence if I just download a DRM-free version of the same book.
Of course that doesn't change anything legally but technically making a simple "GUI" to de-drm ebooks is something that any high-level programmer could do in a few minutes.
It's "illegal" while it shouldn't be, since it bans fair use (format/device shifting). So in practice people simply ignore nonsensical "laws" like these, since they "place unrealistic demands on reality" (the way Cory Doctorow phrased it). So removing DRM should be compatible with mass market no matter how many nonsensical laws will try to prevent it and tools to remove DRM are distributed through services hosted in countries which don't have such nonsense like DMCA 1201. It applies even to such elementary things like libdvdcss which one needs to play DVDs on Linux.
I think a lot of factors are influencing this trend, but I don't buy that DRM is the problem. As rude as it may sound, I doubt most of the general public even knows what DRM is. Well, the data itself shows that the majority of consumer book sales are going to paper, so that argument may be moot anyway.
Newer generations probably won't purchase nearly as many paper books (or digital, even) as older generations. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out. The market will probably shrink and be taken over by short-form work designed for tablets and e-readers.
This gives the impression that the publishers don't give the e-books as much priority as the print editions. Given this fact, I don't see how they can complain if e-book sales are hitting a plateau.
Large media producers of all stripes are notorious for conflating their sales with all sales. That makes for a particularly egregious practice here, where indies may account for 30-40% or more of sales.
This held steady until around November of last year, and then suddenly declined. Today print sales are nearly 2x that of the Kindle sales.
The important data point is that the Amazon sales ranks of both have remained steady.