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US ebook sales up in May

The AAP released their monthly sales figures today for May 2011. It took a little number crunching, but it looks like ebooks are up significantly over April 2011.

For some reason the AAP decided to hide the specific figures for May, but I dug up the older numbers and did the math myself. Year-to-Date sales were $389.7M, which doesn’t really tell you much besides the fact that it’s a big increase (160%) over the first 5 months of last year ($389.7m vs $149.8m).

but when you subtract the first 4 months ($72.8m+69+90.3+69.9, April- January), you’ll find that the actual May ebook sales were $87.7 million, and that’s a significant increase over April ($72.8m).  And this occurred in a shrinking print market ($2967.5 Million vs $3128.4M, -5.1%), which makes the ebook figures that much more impressive.

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Comments


Daniel July 21, 2011 um 1:31 pm

So the total book market shrank in may? Or I am missing something. Although the profit margins may be a bit higher on ebooks with current marketing model.

Nate Hoffelder July 21, 2011 um 1:51 pm

Forget about those numbers. They can’t be trusted and I’ll explain why later today.


James W. Lewis July 22, 2011 um 11:54 am

I think the recent closing of Borders and increase of ebook sales signify a sign of the times. It happened to the music and movie industry, so books were inevitable.


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