With Kindle, the Best Sellers Don't Need to Sell

The New York Times article With Kindle, the Best Sellers Don’t Need to Sell by Motoko Rich discusses the promotional aspect of giving away free downloads of digital books. While this may sound like a contradictory idea, giving books away to make money, publishers have found that giving away one book can lead to increased sales of that author’s other titles. Some publishing companies are insisting that books are not given away at all because it devalues the meaning and work that goes in to writing a book. Other publishing companies have problems with the price of a digital book being only $9.99 when a typical paperback is $13 and an average hardcover $25. Publishers are definitely concerned about the shift from paper books to digital but some are more willing to make changes then others.

Samhain Publishing is a good example of a company that is able to turn free digital book downloads in to profits. By offering a free download of a romance novel by author Lauren Dane, sales of her older titles skyrocketed in the same month. This shows how giving away a digital copy of one book can lead to substantial sales in the long run.

Though e-books still only represent about 5 percent of the total book market, they are still a very important item for publishers to keep an eye on. Digital book and e-reader sales are on the rise; books may soon be a thing of the past. One initially hesitant author in the article mentions that you can “be afraid of what is coming or try and aggressively embrace it in some form.”

Amazon announced last week that since June’s Kindle price cut from $259 to $189 sales have been increasing of both the reader and e-books according to an article from Reuters. The purpose of this price cut was to ward off competition from Barnes and Nobles Nook and Apple’s iPad. Bad news for publishers who want to stay in paper, Amazon also announced that over the past three months it sold 143 e-books for every 100 hardcover books. Also, Amazon claims that they have sold three times as many digital books in the first half of 2010 compared to the first half of 2009.

Overall publishers will need to find new and different ways to promote book sales both on paper and digitally. The introduction of digital books and e-readers has revolutionized the way people read. Jeff Bezos has changed not only the bookstore, but also the book. So far Amazon has been a major winner in the digital reader market, but there is still a significant opportunity for authors and publishers alike to make new profits from a new breed of book reading consumer.