The largest online book retailer Amazon.com sold more digital books than hardbacks between January and March, it said.
From April to June, the company sold 43% more digital books for its Kindle handheld device than hardback books, nearly three years after the electronic format became available, according to a press release on Monday, 19 July.
In June alone, digital books outsold hardbacks by 80%. The company did not provide total sales data for either format.
Sales of e-books, as they are also called, have been boosted by a drop in the price of the Kindle hardware, according to Amazon founder and chief executive officer Jeff Bezos.
“The growth rate of Kindle device unit sales has tripled since we lowered the price from $259 (R1,956.43) to $189 (R1,427.74),” he was quoted as saying in a company press release, without indicating how many were sold.
Kindle books can also be read on competing hardware devices such as Apple Inc’s iPhone or iPad, or laptop computers.
Of the 630 000 e-book titles available for purchase on the Amazon website, over 510 000 cost under $10 (R75.54), the company said. No information was provided on the price of Amazon’s hardbacks.
Amazon did not include downloads of its nearly 1.8 million electronic titles available free of charge.
The figures released did not include paperback sales, which represent over two-thirds of the market by revenue according to the Association of American Publishers.
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