Retail giant Amazon has claimed UK Kindle titles outsell hardbacks “at a rate of more than 2 to 1” as it issued an update on the growth of its ebook platform.
“This is truly astonishing when you consider that we’ve been selling hardcover books from Amazon.co.uk for over 13 years and Kindle books for only nine months,” said Gordon Willoughby, European Director, Kindle in a statement.
Despite the retailer’s enthusiasm,
its statement failed to provide actual sales numbers for either format and the price difference between many ebooks – especially ultralow priced self-published titles – and hardbacks renders the comparison largely symbolic.
Amazon has also reported that “for every 100 print books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 105 Kindle books.”
As noted in January, many Kindle owners outside the UK 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.
Again, this makes meaningful comparison of the figures difficult without both unit sales figures and knowledge of how paper books are shipped to countries outside the US by Amazon.com
Though Amazon’s statement is light on detailed statistics, the reported trend echoes recent announcements by a number of publishers that digital sales in the UK and US continue to grow.