Ebooks now 15% of Simon & Schuster revenue

CBS posted their Q2 financial report yesterday, and one of the high points was Simon & Schuster.

In spite of profits being down 3% last quarter ($183 million from $189 million Q2 2010), ebook revenues were up.  They're now reported as being ~15% of revenue for that quarter. That works out to about $27.5 million, which is a pretty penny. It's more than double last year's reported sales.

Let me put the growth into perspective. Last year the US ebook market averaged around $30 million in reported sales each month. This means that S&S reported sales for Q2 would have been around a third of the ebook market for last year. Considering that they're significantly less than a third of the general book market, it should tell you how fast the ebook market has grown. Of course, the S&S figures are from the quarter ending in June  and thus they are too new to be considered reliable.

On a related note, Pearson released their earnings report last week, and Penguin reported that ebooks were 15% of revenue.

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image by Alun Salt