For the first time ever, ebooks are making more revenue than hardcover books. Ebooks made $282.3 million USD while hardcovers made $229.6 million. The only growth from hardcovers is in the children's and young adult's sections, where it rose to $187.7 million. However, ebooks in these sections rose from $3.9 million last year to $64.3 million this year.
Do these numbers foretell an inevitable turn to a digital world of books? As a reader and writer myself, I've always had those classic, hard books that you can smell and hold firmly in your hands. I can see myself getting a kindle someday, but I have a hard time seeing how hardcovers can completely go away. Books are some of the most durable things in the world and can last for years. That's what I think, but what about any of you?
Revenue is not profit, Mickey. Revenue actually goes down with ebooks because they're usually sold cheaper than physical books. Profit is what goes up when you take distribution costs out.
So for ebook revenue to be growing that fast.... That's a big deal.
While physical books will always be around, this isn't a surprise. I think the most positive aspect of this is people are maybe actually reading more — although with the ease and nature of digital consumption combined with reduced prices, i'm sure those who favor eBooks often have a huge "backloggery" (hmm, "bookloggery"? lol) of unread books the same way gamers do with unplayed games.
I never liked hardcovers. Take up too much space, cost too much, and are unwieldy for traveling.
I'd like an ereader if more than half of my favorite books were available online, and if I didn't know someone whose Kindle has crashed three times now and had to be replaced each time, without any mishandling. Probably a rare case, but the lack of books I want is the bigger issue.
Shpy, that has long been true of impulsive buyers before eBooks hit the scene. There were Backloggery-esque sites for that purpose before Backloggery, too. Used to use Librarythings and to a lesser extent Goodreads, myself.
I used to like having physical copies of books, CDs, and games, because I didn't like feeling like I was paying for something non-physical, but that was before I had to go to South Africa for 2 years and had to get rid of most of my stuff. Now, I'm always trying to avoid collecting stuff because I never want to go through that again. Spending money on something is more for the experience than the thing, so I really don't care about having it on paper if I'm going to buy a book.
That being said, I find ebooks generally overpriced considering that they should be a fair amount cheaper to produce and distribute than paper books: if I'm paying for my Internet connection to download them and my ereader to read them on and they're saving money on paper and shipping, then they shouldn't be charging the same amount for the ebooks as paper books. I find I usually pay 2/3rds or 1/2 as much if I buy music from iTunes vs buying CDs, but with ebooks they seem to be the same price or only like 10% less. Really I have no motivation to buy them when they're so pricey and I can just read the classics for free or borrow ebooks for free from the library.
eBooks aren't necessarily cheaper - I don't know what the rules are elsewhere in the world, but here in Britain eBooks are taxable whilst physical books are not. As a result, eBooks can be the same or even sometimes more expensive than the paper edition.
Still, there's room for both in the world - I tend to buy new books on my Kindle, and older books in physical copies from a discount/old book store or charity shop, where they tend to be about a quid.
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Topic: Ebook Revenues Beat Hardcovers
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