IT’S BAD NEWS for bookshops but good news for people who like reading.
Just two years after the Kindle launched in the UK, Amazon has said that customers are now buying more Kindle ebooks than printed books from its UK site.
The retailer said that for every 100 print books sold on Amazon.co.uk this year, it sold 114 Kindle books.
Fifty Shades of Grey author EL James is the bestselling author in the UK Amazon store having sold over two million Kindle books in just four months.
Her combined print and Kindle sales make her the best selling author of all time at Amazon.co.uk, eclipsing JK Rowling’s total sales for the Harry Potter series.
Other authors in the top ten include Hunger Games author Suzanne Collins, Stieg Larsoon who wrote the Millennium trilogy, and thriller writer James Patterson.
Amazon also said that Kindle readers are buying up to four times as many books as they used to buy prior to owning a Kindle, which it described as a renaissance of reading.
“Customers in the UK are now choosing Kindle books more often than print books, even as our print business continues to grow,” said Jorrit Van der Meulen, the vice president of Kindle EU.
“We hit this milestone in the US less than four years after introducing Kindle, so to reach this landmark after just two years in the UK is remarkable and shows how quickly UK readers are embracing Kindle”.
As a result of the success of Kindle, we’re selling more books than ever before on behalf of authors and publishers.
Amazon said the figures included sales of printed books which did not have Kindle editions, but excluded free ebooks, which would have made the number even higher if they had been included.
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