June eBook Sales UP Over 200 Percent YTD no comments
I reported yesterday that ebook sales were a bit less in the second quarter than the first quarter. This is not really surprising as the first quarter saw a huge spike in ebook sales as all of those new ereaders sold over the holidays got filled up with new ebooks. After such a huge jump in the prior quarter it is perhaps even a little surprising that the second quarter sales were only 2.5 percent less. Perhaps the launch of the iPad at the beginning of the second quarter had something to do with that.
At any rate, the Association of American Publishers today released their numbers for publisher’s book sales for the month of June. Overall, book sales were up by 10.6 percent over last June, and 11.4 percent year-to-date.
Sales of ebooks in June were up 204.2 percent year-to-date, and 118.9 percent higher than last June. Even though ebook sales continue to skyrocket as more and more readers switch to digital books, do keep in mind that ebooks still make up only a small portion of overall book sales (just under $30 million out of $1.1 billion total book sales).
Downloaded audiobooks also continue to gain ground – sales were up 32.8 percent over last year and 34.3 percent year-to-date. This is probably coming in large part at the expense of physical audiobooks, whose sales fell by 35.9 percent over last June and are down 3.6 percent for the year.
Higher education publishing sales also saw dramatic increases both over last June (up 35.2 percent) and year-to-date (27.4 percent). No doubt this is due to the economy, as the retrenched retrain.
