Categories
Book and Reading News

Harlequin romance e-books selling 10K monthly in UK

Harlequin Mills & Boon, the British publisher of Harlequin romance novels reports that its monthly sales of e-books in May site exceeded 10,000, according to New Media Age. The company sells more than 200 million books a year, both online and at retail.

For context’s sake, let’s assume that romance sales are a bit less cyclical than books generally, but that May is a slightly lower-sales month, say about 9.5 million books sold: E-books account for less than 1/10th of one percent of sales at the company that month.

Categories
Book and Reading News

Audiobook sales statistics for 2008

The Audio Publishers Association announced its 2008 sales figures, which fell 6.7 percent to $331 million, according to Publishers Weekly. The decline is due to the falling sales of CD audiobooks, which are more expensive on a per-title basis than downloadable books. CD sales were down to $238 million to 72 percent of the market, compared to 78 percent in 2007.

I’ve updated the BooksAhead audiobook statistics pages to reflect this data.

Categories
Book and Reading News

Kindle DX sold out in three days—not so much

UPDATE: Reader David Sloves notes that shipping schedules may be the culprit in the shortage of Kindle DX. In fact, the Amazon site now says Kindle DX will be available on June 22 (as of Tuesday, Amazon says June 22; last evening, it said June 17), so we have the answer. No, the Kindle DX didn’t sell out in three days.

Original text:

First manufacturing run of Kindle DX reportedly sold out. CRN reports the first, undisclosed number of Kindle DXes produced for Amazon by Prime View International, has sold out in just three days. The device, which sells for $489, was introduced earlier this year and launched on June 10. No wonder Prime View bought E-Ink Corp. earlier this month, they’re cutting their costs as Kindle sales accelerate.

You know what would be nice as Amazon reorders? Spec in a removable memory slot in both Kindle 2 and Kindle DX.

Keep in mind that Amazon hedges its bets. Kindle1 shortages were the result of short production runs. This time, though, I’ll bet the manufacturer kept the production line intact.