Amazon selling more eBooks than print

Online retailer Amazon has announced that it now sells more eBooks than hardbacks and paperbacks combined. This can be broken down by the statistic that for every 100 print books that leave the company's digital shelves, 114 eBooks are downloaded.

Much of the growth of eBook sales has been put down to several big sellers, including the Harry Potter books and recent phenomenon 50 Shades of Grey, which has already sold over two million copies in just four months. However it's not just re-written Twilight fan fiction that is boosting digital sales, but self publishing too. According to Amazon's figures – via BBC – authors choosing to handle the publishing of their own books has gone up by over 400 per cent in the last year.

However, while impressive, these figures need to be taken in context. Amazon currently dominates, some would say monopolises, the UK eBook market, owning between 85 and 90 per cent. That means that while the retailer's print book sales may be a much smaller percentage of the UK's total number,  the percentage given for digital eBook sales is almost the entirety of the market – of course it's going to be bigger.

KitGuru Says: Amazon has been a big promoter of of eBook sales and looks set to continue to dominate in the UK, unless other firms – perhaps those more traditionally focused on print – can step in and bring their own eReaders to market.

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