"Eek! Print is Dead!"

When Amazon announced earlier this week that it had sold more ebooks for the Kindle than it had hardbacks, some media sources took a sky-is falling approach.

"Electronic books appear to have reached a tipping point," said ABC News breathlessly. "E-books are taking over the world," proclaimed the Baltimore Sun. "Goodbye, paper," reported Dvice.

Not so fast.

True, Amazon was slightly less coy with this announcement than they have been in the past--they provided an actual number, sort of: 143 Kindle sales for every 100 hardback book sales.

Still, the company continues its practice of providing relative numbers--more than, fastest growing, this ratio--rather than just providing straight sales figures or revenue figures. The closest thing the Amazon press release provides in the way of actual, direct numbers is "James Patterson had sold 1.14 million e-books to date. Of those, 867,881 were Kindle books" and "Five authors--Charlaine Harris, Stieg Larsson, Stephenie Meyer, James Patterson, and Nora Roberts--have each sold more than 500,000 Kindle books." But a total number of Kindle sales? Nada.

The company did say it had excluded free e-books from the total. Well, it's good to know. But as one person I know said, upon reading the news, "Who buys hardbacks anyway?"

David Carnoy of CNET analyzes the data in much more detail, noting many other factors to consider before taking the news at face value. Most notably, while Amazon didn't count free ebooks, "The Kindle Store is literally flooded with self-published titles and many of them sell between 99 cents and $3.99," he pointed out. "Some self-published authors are doing very well because they've written a decent book or books that are priced cheaply." With hardbacks costing $10 or more, it isn't any wonder that ebooks for a third to a tenth of the price are doing better.

Coincidentally, this is just a couple of weeks after it was predicted that the Kindle and other devices were dying.

If Kindles really were doing so well, Amazon would be releasing straight numbers, not just these comparative figures. 

For more:
- see this CNET article

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