In April for the first time Amazon reports that it has sold 105 e-books for every 100 hardcover and paperback books including books without digital versions and excluding free digital books. Sales of e-books in March reached $69 million, an increase of 146% from March of 2010, but e-books still account for just 14% of the overall book market in dollar sales.

 

Last July Amazon reported that sales of e-books had eclipsed those of hardcovers (see “Amazon Selling More E-Books Than Hardcovers”), but according to the New York Times, April marks the first time that e-book sales had outstripped the sales of all other types of books on Amazon. 

 

Of course, even though its share of the digital book market is diminishing thanks to competition from Barnes & Noble, Google, and Apple, Amazon remains the leading distributor of e-books, so it would logically be the first place where e-books would outsell print.  According to The Times, Amazon is hoping to be able to maintain its digital book dominance by introduceing an Android-powered tablet to compete with the iPad later this year.

 

So far Amazon has not released the actual number of e-books it has sold or discussed whether selling the cheaper e-books is more or less profitable for the company than selling print books.

 

Digital print consultant Mike Shatzkin told The Times: “They’re (Amazon) taking print sales away from others while their own devices are taking print sales away from them. That’s the real import of those numbers. It’s one more nail in the coffin of brick-and-mortar stores.”