September E-Book Sales at $80.3M; Q3 2011 at $251.7M

September 2011 e-book sales: $80.3M

E-Book sales dipped a bit in September 2011, to $80.3M, but were more than double last year’s results, and were strong enough to carry e-books to a new record quarter of $251.7M in Q3, 2011. For the past 13 months:

• Sep 2010: $39.9 M
• Oct 2010: $40.7 M
• Nov 2010: $46.6 M
• Dec 2010: $49.5 M
• Jan 2011: $69.9 M
• Feb 2011: $90.3 M
• Mar 2011: $69.0 M
• Apr 2011: $72.8 M
• May 2011: $87.7 M
• June 2011: $80.2 M
• July 2011: $82.6M
• Aug 2011: $88.8M
• Sep 2011: $80.3M

Q3 2011 e-book sales: $251.7M

The quarterly sales of just over a quarter of a billion dollars help push e-books to $727.7M for the first 9 months of the year, an increase of 137.9% over last year, and close enough that a strong holiday push could put e-book sales at a billion dollars for the year, as I predicted after February’s sales.

While the AAP frustratingly has become more stingy with its print book sales figures, they did provide percentages that I used to estimate print book sales for the month (fortunately, I keep a spreadsheet with each month’s figures going back to last year). The percentage changes for print books, and my estimates for Sep 2011 sales:

• Adult hardcover: down 18.1%, est. $147.7M
• Adult trade paperback: flat, est. $111.5M
• Adult mass-market paper: down 54.3%, est. $31.0M
• Young adult hardcover: up 2.1%, est. $78.2M
• Young adult paperback: down 14.6%, est. $41.5M

Fairly brutal numbers across the board, with only a slight (2.1%) increase in young adult hardcover, flat adult trade paper sales, and decreases in the other categories, including a dramatic 54.3% decrease in mass-market paperback sales. People have said that mass-market paperback sales are the most susceptible to being replaced by e-book sales, since they are generally fiction novels that people read once and then discard or donate — as opposed to hardcovers that people like to display on their bookshelves. The numbers are bearing that out, as e-book sales, which just last year were below mass-market paperback, are now nearly triple. The AAP also pointed out that sales in all print trade segments were down for the 9-month period so far this year.

Based on those estimations, e-book sales accounted for 16.25% of combined print/e-book sales for the month, roughly double the 8.17% overall figure from 2010.