UK Readers Now Buying More Kindle Books Than Print Books on Amazon.co.uk
From an Amazon News Release:
Amazon.co.uk began selling paperback books in October 1998. Almost twelve years later in August 2010, Amazon.co.uk introduced the revolutionary Kindle and began selling Kindle books to customers in the UK. By May 2011, Kindle book sales had surpassed hardcover book sales, at a rate of more than 2 to 1. Today, two years after introducing Kindle to UK readers, Amazon.co.uk customers are now purchasing more Kindle books than all printed books – hardcover and paperback – combined.
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- So far in 2012, for every 100 print books Amazon.co.uk has sold, it has sold 114 Kindle books. This includes sales of hardcover and paperback books by Amazon.co.uk where there is no Kindle edition. Free Kindle books are excluded and if included would make the number even higher.
- With Kindle, readers read more. In the UK, we have seen that Kindle readers buy 4x the number of books they did prior to owning a Kindle. And, Kindle owners continue to buy physical books as well.
- Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) authors are benefitting from the success of Kindle, earning up to 70% royalties from the books they sell:
- ‘Love…from both Sides’ by KDP author Nick Spalding is one of the top 10 bestselling items of the last quarter at Amazon.co.uk. Spalding has sold almost 250,000 copies of his books at Amazon.co.uk.
- Rachel Abbott saw similar success in the first three months of the year. Her debut novel ‘Only the Innocent’ was one of the top 10 bestselling items of the quarter at Amazon.co.uk.
- ‘Locked In’ by KDP author Kerry Wilkinson was the #1 bestselling book of the three months to Christmas 2011. Since he began self-publishing his books through KDP in July 2011, he has sold over 300,000 copies of his books to Kindle readers worldwide.
- Over the past year, there has been more than a 400% increase in independent UK authors and publishers using KDP to share their books with the millions of Kindle readers worldwide.
- EL James is the #1 bestselling author in the Kindle Store at Amazon.co.uk, having sold over two million Kindle books in just four months. Her print and Kindle sales combined make her the #1 bestselling author of all time at Amazon.co.uk, eclipsing JK Rowling’s total sales. She is a former KDP author.
- The top 10 most popular authors of 2012 in the Amazon.co.uk Kindle Store are: EL James, Suzanne Collins, Stieg Larsson, James Patterson, Lee Child, Nick Spalding, S.J. Watson, George R.R Martin, Katia Lief and Kerry Wilkinson. Three of these bestsellers – Nick Spalding, Katia Lief and Kerry Wilkinson- are KDP authors.
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Filed under: Companies (Publishers/Vendors), News, Publishing
About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.