Thursday Midday Links: eBooks 20% of the Market?

Barnes & Noble reports that the majority of its ebook sales are agency priced books (which feeds nicely into my Sunday article about how the biggest winner of agency pricing was BN).   BN announced its quarterly results two days ago.  Total sales are up 2% to $1.4billion, driven by large increases at bn.com as a result of nook color and nook touch and “a quadrupling of digital content sales over last year’s first quarter.”  In store sales decreased 3% for the year, particularly for books whereas in store sales of the Nook and toys and games are increasing.  It’s selfpublishing section PubIT! is also experiencing strong growth.  To wit: BN’s book orders from publishers will not be increasing in the near future.  Source: Market Watch

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Amazon moves:

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BISG came out with a new study about reading behavior. You can read some of the tweets by BISG here. Of interest:
  • 3 most popular channels for mass market paperbacks are supermarkets, Wal-Mart & independent bookstores
  •  Amazon readers’ preferred e-tailer increasing mkt share to 71.5% from 60.5% last yr
  • e-books have been adopted by >15% of bookbuyers…many still want print. But some of the heavy readers r loyal to ebooks
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Random House’s digital revenue was 20% of overall sales for the first half of 2011 (source) and that figure is true for Hachette as well (source).
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Sony debuted a new eink reader.  It’s cheaper ($149) and has wifi and direct access to participating public libraries.  I would have been excited if this was released in 2010 but in 2011, I think Sony has to come up with something more enticing than this.  It’s still the most expensive wifi device on the market with no web based store and the highest prices.
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You really need to watch this video. It only takes seconds. I watched it three times in a row.  Are you back? Good, now recommend a firefighter story for me.

 

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