Online retailer Amazon has claimed the sales of ebooks for its Kindle reader now exceed the number of paperback books sold via its Amazon.com website.
According to trading statement issued by the company, for every 100 paperback books Amazon.com has sold the Company sold 115 Kindle books during the quarter ending December 31st.
As in the past, the retailer has not issued detailed sales figures or revealed the number of books actually sold.
Assessing the significance of Amazon’s figures is complicated because some international Kindle owners are required to purchase ebooks from Amazon.com whereas they might usually be expected to buy paper books from their local Amazon site where available.
For example, Amazon’s German website Amazon.de doesn’t offer the Kindle or its ebooks and directs users to the Amazon.com site.
Responding to an enquiry from this website, an Amazon spokesperson confirmed the Kindle book figures referred to purchases by “international customers and customers in the US, excluding UK customers who purchase via the Amazon.co.uk Kindle store.”
The spokesman added that the firm’s comparison was “of Kindle eBooks on Amazon.com V paperback books also on Amazon.com” but stressed that the .com site ships physical books internationally.
In a statement Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said: “After selling millions of third-generation Kindles with the new Pearl e-ink display during the quarter, Kindle books have now overtaken paperback books as the most popular format on Amazon.com.
“Last July we announced that Kindle books had passed hardcovers and predicted that Kindle would surpass paperbacks in the second quarter of this year, so this milestone has come even sooner than we expected – and it’s on top of continued growth in paperback sales.”