If you couldn’t tell from the massive e-sales of a tale about a young lady who loves to love the wrong man, ebooks are massively popular, doubling in 2011 to completely surpass sales of hardcover adult fiction.
The Book Industry Study Group released their poll of 2,000 publishers yesterday, announcing that book sales declined 2.5 percent in 2011, down to $27.2 billion from $27.9 in 2010. Ebooks brought in $2 billion in 2011 while most revenue still came from print.
The BISG abstract notes that retail sales remain the top sales channel for publishers in 2011 although direct-to-consumer sales doubled to $1 billion.
Given that it’s probably in the publisher’s best interests to report that retail sales are still strong, we can take that last note with a grain of salt. From where I sit – with a Kindle Fire and a Nook at my left hand and an iPad at my right – it looks like the slow decline of the dead tree book is continuing apace.
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