Just saw a note on Engadget that ebook sales in January were reported to have accumulated $69.9 million in revenue for their publishers, a 116% jump vs. the same time last year. This information certainly validates everything we’ve been saying here about the future dominance of digital book distribution.

As you might expect, however, print sales didn’t fare quite as well-

During the same period, adult hardcovers were down 11.3 percent to $49.1 million and paperbacks faced a similar reduction in demand and fell to $83.6 million, a precipitous drop of 19.7 percent year-on-year. Educational and children’s books weren’t spared from this cull of the physical tome, either.

This data comes from The Association of American Publishers, which is the national trade association of the U.S. book publishing industry. Other tidbits from the report state that overall sales were slightly less than the same time last year, down 1.9 %.

Do you find this surprising? If you’re an author that’s distributing ebooks my guess is that you’re starting to see ebook sales overtake your print sales, and if you’re one of the growing number of people who own an ebook reader I’m also betting that you’re buying more ebooks than print books. From where I sit, I don’t see this pattern changing anytime soon.

With this January data, 2011 is certainly shaping up to be an interesting year. Let me know what you think, and till next time–keep publishing!

Henry Hutton
PublishandSell.com
hhutton@publishandsell.com
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