One of the great ironies of the e-book era is that while digital data streams and a market concentrated among a small number of retailers should result in an easily measured, fully transparent marketplace, we are left with the opposite, since those retailers have declined to share any data.

In the US, publishing associations continue to try to improve general knowledge about e-book sales data, and at least some progress has been made. In 2011 the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) joined forces to compile better sales data on the publishing business in their BookStats project. It is the most comprehensive publisher data compilation yet in the US -- but all the released numbers include substantial statistical modeling, so we refer to those numbers as estimates only. In fact, actual publisher sales data comprises only 61 of their tabulations overall (and probably less within trade).

For 2011, BookStats estimated that trade publisher e-book revenues were $1.97 billion, comprising almost 16% of trade dollars. The e-book total was $838 million in 2010, accounting for 6.7% of trade sales. It's no surprise that adult fiction drove the e-book gains, more than doubling to $1.27 billion from $585 million in 2010, and comprising 31% of dollar sales within that category...

View Full Article