What proportion of current book sales, would you guess, is represented by ebooks?
My guess was around 50/50 but I was surprised to find out that paper books have made a comeback - they now generate roughly ten times the revenue of ebooks. Even more surprisingly, a significant proportion of that success is attributable to young readers, the ones I would least expect to prefer that format.
I took the photo above in one of my favorite bookstores: City Lights in San Francisco.
Publishers of books in all formats made almost $26 billion in revenue last year in the U.S., with print making up $22.6 billion and e-books taking $2.04 billion, according to the Association of American Publishers’ annual report 2019.