Today an estimated 75 percent
of online book purchases in the United States are made through Amazon, and its overall market share in book sales is astonishingly high.
The company announced today that all of their new tablets will feature integration of the Kobo Bookstore, as the destination of choice
for online book purchases.
2013 was year two without Borders and countless other bookstores that couldn't compete with the increase
of online book purchasing.
Plus, a study out this week in the journal Nature Human Behavior looked at difference between the science books read by liberals and conservatives by
analyzing online book purchases.
He charts the percentage of US
online book purchases of Indie + Amazon imprint titles (first percentage below) against the percentage of US online book purchases that have gone digital (ebooks, audio)(second percentage below).
Geographically, with nearly fourteen times more square mileage than France, readers in the US suffer from being so spread out that customers who don't live in major cities are already feeling the effects of losing their local bookshops, and government initiatives aren't going to make those bookstores closer to customers who have already found the convenience of
online book purchasing.
Seeing a breakdown of offline versus
online book purchases would certainly put things into perspective.
So the race between single - function e-ink and more full - function tablets accelerates the movement from print to digital book consumption; and the move from print to digital book consumption accelerates the shift from store - based purchasing to online purchasing; and the shift to
online book purchasing, whether print or digital, accelerates the reduction of brick - and - mortar shelf space.
I have a long history with them and pretty much all of
my online book purchases have either been through Amazon or their Marketplace.