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Fueled by the massive success of the Fifty Shades of Grey erotic novels, sales of fictional e-books rose 42% in 2012, while non-fiction e-books grew by just 22% to $484.2 million according to the New York Times. As the sales of e-books have increased the gaudy percentage increases of previous years (see "E-Book Sales Exploding") have been tamped down somewhat in the major categories, but Children’s books, a market segment where e-books had been slow to take off at first because relatively few kids had their own readers, experienced a massive 117% increase in 2012 (over a much smaller base in 2011). It appears that it may take a few more years before the full extent of the market penetration by e-books is known across all the various segments of the market.
Overall publishers reported net revenues of $15 billion in 2012, which was up from $14 billion in 2011. E-books accounted for 20% of publisher revenues versus 15% in 2011 and 14% in 2010 (see "E-Books Outsell All Print Books at Amazon").