Book Wars. John B. Thompson
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2007, thanks in part to the Sony Reader, but by the end of 2007 ebook sales were still well under $50 million. But from 2008 on, ebook sales began to increase dramatically, reaching $69 million in 2008 – the first full year of the Kindle – and jumping to $188 million in 2009, an increase of nearly 3-fold in one year. By 2012, ebook sales had reached over $1.5 billion, a 22-fold increase in just four years. This was dizzying growth.
Table 1.1 US ebook revenue for trade books, $ millions, 2008–2012
| 2008 | 69.1 |
| 2009 | 187.9 |
| 2010 | 502.7 |
| 2011 | 1095.1 |
| 2012 | 1543.6 |
| Source: Association of American Publishers | |
Figure 1.1 US ebook revenue for trade books, 2008–2012
Source: Association of American Publishers
For the large trade publishers in the US, the surge in ebook sales meant that a growing proportion of their revenue was being accounted for by ebooks rather than traditional print books, whether hardcover or paperback. Although the precise figures varied from house to house, the overall pattern of growth of ebook sales as a percentage of overall revenue during the period from 2006 to 2012 looked roughly like figure 1.2. For many large US trade publishers, ebooks accounted for around 0.1% of overall revenue in 2006 and 0.5% in 2007; in 2008, this grew to around 1%; in 2009, this was up to about 3%; by 2010, it had risen to around 8%; by 2011, it was around 17%; and by 2012, it had risen to between 20 and 25%, depending on the publisher and the nature of their list. It was no longer a negligible figure – far from it.
Figure 1.2 Ebook sales as a percentage of total revenues of major US trade publishers, 2006–2012
Source: Association of American Publishers
The steep rise in ebook sales in the four years from 2008 to 2012 was dramatic and unsettling for many in the industry: after several years during which the much-heralded ebook revolution seemed like a false dawn, suddenly it was an uncontestable reality. Moreover, given the staggering rate of growth, there was no telling where this would end. It’s not hard to see that, if you were a publisher watching this take place around you in 2010, 2011 and 2012, you really would be wondering what was going to happen to your industry. You might even be panicking. You would almost certainly be wondering if publishing was going to go the same way as the music industry. Would ebook sales keep growing at this dramatic rate and become 40 or 50 per cent of your business, maybe even 80 or 90 per cent, in a few years’ time? Were books heading in the same direction as CDs and vinyl LPs – on a precipitous downward slope and likely to be eclipsed by digital downloads? Was this the beginning of the end of the physical book? These were the questions in the minds of most people in the industry at the time – they were seriously worried, and understandably so.
But then something equally dramatic happened: the growth suddenly stopped. It levelled off in 2013 and 2014 and then began to decline. No one at the time had expected this – even the most unswayable sceptics were surprised by this sudden reversal of fortune. In 2013, ebook sales did not continue their meteoric rise but actually fell slightly – from $1,543 million in 2012 to $1,510 million in 2013, a decline of 2.1%, as shown in table 1.3 and figure 1.3. Ebooks showed a small increase in 2014 and then fell more sharply in 2015, down to $1,360 million, a decline of 15%, which was matched by a similar decline in the following year. Figure 1.3 also shows the rate of growth from one year to the next. It shows that the rate of growth was extremely high in 2009 and 2010, around 170% each year, but then the rate of growth began a steep decline until it reached a number just below zero in 2013. After a small increase in 2014, the rate of growth remained negative from 2015 to 2018.
Table 1.2 Ebook sales as a percentage of total revenues of major US trade publishers, 2006–2012
| 2006 | 0.1 |
| 2007 | 0.5 |
| 2008 | 1.1 |
| 2009 | 2.9 |
| 2010 | 7.6 |
| 2011 | 17.3 |
| 2012 | 23.2 |
| Source: Association of American Publishers | |
Table 1.3 US ebook revenue for trade books and rate of growth of ebook sales, 2008–2018
| Revenue ($ millions) | Rate of growth (%) | |
|---|---|---|
| 2008 | 69.1 | |
| 2009 | 187.9 | 171.9 |
| 2010 | 502.7 | 167.5 |
| 2011 | 1095.1 | 117.8 |
| 2012 | 1543.6 | 41 |
| 2013 | 1510.9 | –2.1 |
| 2014 | 1601.1 | 6 |
| 2015 | 1360.5 | –15 |
| 2016 | 1157.7 | –15 |
| 2017 | 1054.3 | –8.9 |
| 2018 | 1016.1 | –3.6 |
| Source: Association of American Publishers | ||
Figure 1.3 US ebook revenue for trade books and rate of growth of ebook sales, 2008–2018