Seattle – Amazon’s Kindle
e-Book sales have officially over taken those of print books at the online
retailer.
The company reported
today that in just three and a half years e-Book sales now outsell those of
both hardcover and paperbacks books combined.
“We had high hopes that this would happen eventually, but we
never imagined it would happen this quickly – we’ve been selling print books
for 15 years and Kindle books for less than four years,” said Jeff Bezos,
Amazon.com’s founder and CEO.
Amazon said that as of April 1 it is selling 105 Kindle books for
every 100 print books. Free Kindle books are not included in this total. Kindle
books began outselling hard cover books last November.
The latest Kindle offering, Kindle with Special Offers, is now
the most popular selling version in the e-reader family, the company said. This
subsidized version offers up advertising to readers as a way to reduce the
initial cost of $139.
So far in 2011 Amazon has sold three times as many Kindles as it
did during the same period in 2010.
