Amazon Kindle Books Outselling Paperbacks

Although Amazon has been selling books since 1995 it seems, with the birth of the Kindle and the whole digital media scenario, paperbacks and hardcover’s are slowly getting phased out. In July 2010, Kindle book sales had surpassed hardcover book sales, and six months later, Kindle books overtook paperback books to become the most popular format on Amazon.com. Today, less than four years after introducing Kindle books, Amazon.com customers are now purchasing more Kindle books than all print books - hardcover and paperback - combined. Those are figures we can’t choose to deny.

Since April 1, for every 100 print books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 105 Kindle books. This includes sales of hardcover and paperback books by Amazon where there is no Kindle edition. This figure isn’t even taking into account the high number of free eBooks that are available. In less than a year after Amazon launched their UK Kindle Store, Amazon.co.uk started selling more Kindle books than hardcover books, even as hardcover sales continue to grow. Since April 1, Amazon.co.uk customers are purchasing Kindle books over hardcover books at a rate of more than 2 to 1.

It's all digital now!

The U.S. Kindle Store now has more than 950,000 books, including New Releases and 109 of 111 New York Times Best Sellers. Over 790,000 of these books priced at just $10 working out to about Rs. 460 or less, including 69 New York Times Best Sellers. Millions of free, out-of-copyright, pre-1923 books are also available. More than 175,000 books have been added to the Kindle Store in just the last 5 months.

All Kindle Books let you "Buy Once, Read Everywhere" - on all generation Kindles, as well as on the largest number of devices and platforms, including iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, Mac, PC, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, Android-based devices, and soon HP TouchPads and BlackBerry PlayBooks.

Amazon's Whispersync technology syncs your place across devices, so you can pick up where you left off. With Kindle Worry-Free Archive, books you purchase from the Kindle Store are automatically backed up online in your Kindle library on Amazon, where they can be re-downloaded wirelessly for free, anytime.

So where do we see the paperback in the next few years? I guess that’s up to us avid readers to decide. Do you think the paperback will become obsolete within the next 5-10 years? Let us know by following this thread in our Discussion board or leaving your comments below.

You can read a full review of the Amazon Kindle here.