eBook Me, Please. Posted on August 22, 2011 Post a comment

With iPad, Nook, and Kindle sales on the rise, eBook sales come as a clear companion. However, would you have guessed that eBook sales collectively surpassed sales for books in the adult hardcover, religious, children’s and young adult hardcover and paperback, audiobooks, and adult mass market?

It’s true. eBook sales are even beginning to nip at the heels of adult paperbacks, which ranked as the #1 format in 2010, with sales up 160% already in the first half of 2011.

When you actually take a second to digest this information—especially for professionals in the publishing and digital media industries—this information is both exciting and overwhelming. For example, just three years ago, in 2008: eBooks represent 0.6% of the total trade market share. Last year, eBooks jumped to represent 6.4% market share. While it may sound somewhat small, this swell is not something to shrug your shoulders at . . . unless a cool $878 million in translation/total net revenue means nothing to you.

The National Book Foundation has even taken note, amending submission guidelines and accepting an interactive eBook as a National Book Award submission. According to Harold Augenbraum, the executive director of the National Book Foundation, the Awards’ previous rules stated that the book “must be printed and submitted on paper”; however, even these stringent rules were made to be broken.

“There are going to be high quality books that will only be published as ebooks and we will need to figure out how to handle that with our judges,” he said.