Brick-and-mortar retailers who have to compete with online giant Amazon can take no solace from the figures released by the Commerce Department on Tuesday that showed that e-commerce sales had increased by 16.2% in third quarter to a seasonally-adjusted $78 billion dollars.  That total represents 6.6% of the overall sales in the U.S. economy and represents a tripling of the e-commerce share in the past decade, which was at 2.1% in 2004.
 
The situation is even worse if the sales totals of such e-commerce resistant categories such as car dealers, restaurants, and gas stations are subtracted, which boosts e-commerce sales to 10% of overall sales.  In areas that are directly affected by online competition, such as sales of computer hardware, online sales are already up to 25% of the total, and as for books, Bowker reported in 2013 that online sales account for 44% of all book sales in the U.S.
 
Meanwhile Amazon, which has had North American sales of $52 billion in the past year, continues to grow its share of e-commerce sales, which has now reached 18%, a share that has tripled since 2007 when it was 6%. 
 
Amazon recently settled its dispute with Hachette (see "Amazon, Hachette Settle Long-Running Dispute"), which clears the way for Amazon to increase its dominance of e-book sales, but Amazon’s scope embraces much more than just digital books.  In spite of the fact that the straight line upward growth of e-commerce sales will eventually bend as the categories that lend themselves to online sales become saturated, the Wall Street Journal reports a poll of industry analysts who estimate that Amazon’s sales "will grow by more than 20% annually over the next two years."