Amazon UK: Ebooks Are Outselling Paper Books

The Jetsons

From TheGuardian:

Amazon said ... customers are now buying more ebooks than all hardcovers and paperbacks combined. ... [S]ince the start of 2012, for every 100 hardback and paperback books sold on its site, customers downloaded 114 ebooks. Amazon said the figures included sales of printed books which did not have Kindle editions, but excluded free ebooks. (TheGuardian, Kindle ebook sales have overtaken Amazon print sales)

But that's not all:

The company said ... British Kindle users were buying four times as many books as they were prior to owning a Kindle, a trend it described as a renaissance of reading. (TheGuardian, Kindle ebook sales have overtaken Amazon print sales)

That's why Amazon can sell it's ebook readers at a loss. And I'm betting people use them to buy a whole lot more than books.

The World Has Changed
80 percent of the billboards I saw yesterday were for various brands of cell phones, and every single add I saw displayed a domain name. I remember a time when the average person wouldn't have known what to do with a domain name or URL.

The digital revolution has radically changed the world we live in, how much further is it going to go? Are we, eventually, going to order everything from online sites like Amazon? Will stores evolve into storefronts only? When I bought my MacBook Air I was surprised to learn I couldn't have it shipped to my local Apple store, nor could I return my drive there, although the Apple associates were very nice and helped me ship it back free of charge.

Some have envisioned a world where bookstores are subsidized by publishers and kept as storefronts. You wouldn't be able to bring books home from the storefront. You would visit the storefront, browse the books, make your selections, order them online and have them delivered to your home (or wherever). Or your could buy the ebook and have it delivered instantly.

What do you think? Which would you prefer, store or storefront?


Further reading:
- Penelope Trunk Discusses Time Management
- How To Sell 100 Books Per Day: 6 Things You Need To Do
- Writers: Register Your United States Copyright

Photo credit: Wikipedia