Digital Books Selling Like Hotcakes

Right around the time this piece posts, attendees at a panel discussion entitled “The Rise of eBooks” at O’Reilly’s “Tools of Change” conference will gather in a sixth floor Manhattan venue to discuss the future. There, they will be considering figures published by The American Association of Publishers indicating that between 2002 and 2007, the estimated net sales of all books in the U.S. grew by a compound growth rate of 2.5 percent.

During that same period, one sector grew well over twenty times as fast — eBooks, at a compound growth rate of 55.7 percent.

Of course, eBooks still represent only a tiny fraction of the overall publishing business, but as detailed here in recent weeks, that appears on the verge of changing. Though at first glance, Amazon’s unveiling of the Kindle 2 was somewhat underwhelming (the device incorporates incremental improvements in design, navigation, storage capacity, etc., but is hardly revolutionary), more significant is the company’s ambitions for expanding its eBook business in the future.

To me, the pricetag ($359) is a major stumbling block for adoption of the Kindle, but as discussed yesterday, competition is on the way,

Below, courtesy of Mark Coker, who is moderating today’s TOC panel, is a chart illustrating how eBooks outperformed traditional book sales during last year’s recession. As the economy got worse, the advantage enjoyed by digital over print grew substantially. Will these trends persist into the future? Bet on it.