Last summer, in an interview with USA Today, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos predicted impressive growth in e-book sales:
“I predict we will surpass paperback sales sometime in the next nine to 12 months. Sometime after that, we’ll surpass the combination of paperback and hardcover. It stuns me. People forget that Kindle is only 33 months old.”
- Amazon Kindle
Well, he was right about the stunning growth in e-book sales, but it happened even faster than predicted. This week, Amazon has announced that Kindle E-book sales surpassed combined paperback and hardcover sales. If it was bound to happen, why is ts news? For me, the exciting part of this s the validation of e-readers themselves. Though many worried about the death of the music industry, the last 10 years have shown us that devices like the iPod have actually increased the amount of music that consumers buy and carry around. Similarly, as e-readers become more common, there may be more and more people whole always have one with them, using spare time to read, having favorites in their pocket, and sampling new works because it is so easy. For people concerned with publishing, this is a wonderful vision!
