E-book Sales Uptrend Continues

The Association of American Publishers (AAP) has released A January 2011 report on E-book net stats showing net sales increased by 115.8% vs January 2010 (from $32.4 Million to $69.9M). Here's more highlights from the report: 

• Sales of Downloadable Audio Books also rose by 8.8% vs the previous year ($6.0M to $6.5M).
• Total books sales on all platforms, in all categories, hit $805.7 Million for January. This was a slight drop from January 2010’s $821.5M sales (-1.9%).
• Adult Hardcover category fell from $55.4M to $49.1M (-11.3%), Adult Paperback dropped from $104.2M to $83.6 (-19.7%) and Adult Mass Market declined from $56.4M to $39.0 (-30.9%)
• In the Children’s/Young Adult category, Hardcover sales were $31.2M in January 2011 vs $31.8M in January 2010 (-1.9%) while Paperbacks were $25.4M, down 17.7% from $30.9M in January 2010.
• Physical Audio Books sales were $7.3M vs $7.9M the previous year (-6.7%).
• Sales of Religious Books grew by 5.6%, from $49.8M to $52.6M.
• Sales in the Higher Education category were $382.0M for January 2011, a slight drop (-1.4%) from $387.6M the previous year. K-12 sales hit $82.6M for the month vs $97.0M for the previous year (-14.9%).
• In Professional and Scholarly Books, sales grew 1.3%, from $51.2M to $51.8M. Sales of University Press Hardcovers were $3.9M in January 2011 vs $4.5M the previous year (-14.0%) while University Press Paperbacks were $6.2M vs $6.7M (-7.8%).

According to AAP, E-book sales have increased annually and significantly in all nine years of tracking the category. The increases continue to make sense as more and more of us have smart phones, tablets and other portable devices that can run various reader apps.