The Plot Twist: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far From Dead
By ALEXANDRA ALTERSEPT. 22, 2015

Now, there are signs that some e-book adopters are returning to print, or becoming hybrid readers, who juggle devices and paper. E-book sales fell by 10 percent in the first five months of this year, according to the Association of American Publishers, which collects data from nearly 1,200 publishers. Digital books accounted last year for around 20 percent of the market, roughly the same as they did a few years ago.

I read only paper books now, so this really comes as no surprise to me.  On my most recent bestsellers list, only 2 of the 30 books where electronic, and both of those ebooks were only available in eBook format.  

However, if you look at all books sales, eBooks outnumbered physical books sales 53% to 47%.  Most of the ebooks sales were inexpensive downloads--which has really decimated my revenue from commissions on book sales--but that is another story.

While book bootlegging does take place the impact has not been the same as it has been for video and music.  People who buy hardcover books don't buy them on the Black market; they buy them through normal channels. Mass Market and regular paperback books are not worth the time, energy and punishment--it is just easier to bootleg DVDs you have a larger customer base and they are cheaper to copy.

While the New York Times article makes no mention of this, Black booksellers, online and off, have been smashed to smithereens. Of course the New York Times, who writes for white readers will not report on this segment of the business, so it is largely unknown to the general public. I guess the Black book ecosystem will rebound, but, as usual, we will lag our white counterparts by years.

 

 

While I'm still not selling a lot of books, I've yet to find a way to promote the right book, my sales are primarily ebooks. I guess the price is so cheap and it's non-fiction so it's meant to be read in chunks and can be taken on a per chapter basis so reading on an electronic device isn't bad. I have to assume that non fiction ebooks and audio books are doing better and that fiction is the place where this decrease in electronic will happen.