eBooks ... By the Numbers

According to Amazon.com, the U.S. Kindle Store now offers more than 810,000 books, including new releases and 107 of 112 New York Times Best-Sellers. More than 670,000 of these books are $9.99 or less, including 74 New York Times Best-Sellers. Millions of free, out-of-copyright, pre-1923 books also are available.

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" now is the best-selling product in Amazon's history on the third-generation Kindle.

Verkäufe Bücher: Print Still Dominates the German Market

The international book market can paint a slightly different picture when it comes to e-book sales, depending which country you're exploring. In Germany, the market is "still very much dominated by print," wrote Gottfried Honnefelder, president of the German Publishers & Booksellers Association, in überblick 2011, the Frankfurt Book Fair newspaper. In 2009, "all titles were sold primarily in print form, and only rarely as digital books. Estimates suggest, in fact, that e-books currently account for no more than 1 percent of sales," according to Honnefelder.

Like many other countries, however, e-book growth is anticipated, with Honnefelder noting, "… The future will be digital. Around a third of all new releases are already available in Germany as e-books; in textbooks and academic titles, that figure rises to half."

Some projections indicate that e-books could comprise as much as 15 percent of the market in just five years, according to Honnefelder. BB