The way that books are commonly read has changed rapidly over the past three years. Amazon built its far-reaching reputation from its enormous online selection of books, but those books are now sold in digital form more often than in print. In 2010, more Amazon Kindle versions of books were sold through Amazon than physical copies. While Amazon has been selling books online since the earliest days of ecommerce in 1995, the Kindle books outstripped those sales in less than three years of availability.
Customers Buy Ebooks and Kindles
When the price of the ebook readers was lowered to $189, sales of the Amazon Kindle tripled. In June of 2010, 180 Kindle books were sold for every 100 hardcover books. During that same period, 100 print books were sold on Amazon for every 143 Kindle books.
Since that time, the price of the least expensive Kindle model was reduced to $139, making the digital ebook reader the single most popular product on the massive retail site. The new low price has made it affordable enough to become a staple gadget that is now comparable to a cell phone in proliferation.
One of the factors that has created this demand for the Kindle is that the ebook store often offers Kindle books at lower prices than the print versions. While new hardcover New York Times bestsellers routinely cost $25 and more, the Kindle versions of these books cost $9.99. More than 500,000 books in the Amazon ebook store cost $9.99 or less, and there is shipping cost when downloading ebooks.
Free Ebooks From Amazon
There are many useful outlets for free ebooks online, but perhaps the largest of them all is Amazon itself. Almost two million free Kindle books are available on the site for download. The free ebooks downloaded by Kindle owners are not included in the Kindle sales number, making the actual consumption of Kindle ebooks vs. print books even higher than reported.
One of the controversial parts of the Kindle ebook story is that Kindle ebooks are excluded from the Amazon affiliate program. The program is the oldest and most popular affiliate program on the Internet, generating revenue for thousands of websites and blogs. The Kindle exclusion means fewer royalties for affiliates even if the number of sales made for Amazon remains the same. But for readers, it means easier access to books, lower prices for new books and instant ownership of the desired books.
Lizz Shepherd - I am a freelance writer specializing, for now, in Web writing. The Web is an enormous place and I have been carving out my own little ...
