Kindle Book Sales Surpass Print On Amazon UK

Amazon is celebrating the second anniversary of its Kindle e-reader in the UK by claiming that it now sells more e-books than physical copies on Amazon.co.uk.

Kindle books surpassed sales of hardbacks in the UK back in May 2011 at a rate of two to one and now they have leapfrogged the combined totals of both hardbacks and paperbacks.

The online retailer said that for every 100 print books bought through its UK site, it sold 112 Kindle books. Free Kindle books were excluded from the calculations and if included would have made the gap even wider, Amazon said.

Kindle book sales

“Customers in the UK are now choosing Kindle books more often than print books, even as our print business continues to grow. We hit this milestone in the US less than four years after introducing Kindle, so to reach this landmark after just two years in the UK is remarkable and shows how quickly UK readers are embracing Kindle,” said Jorrit Van der Meulen, vice president for Kindle EU.

“As a result of the success of Kindle, we’re selling more books than ever before on behalf of authors and publishers. And thanks to Kindle Direct Publishing, thousands of self-published authors have also been given an outlet to share their work with the millions of Kindle readers worldwide.”

EL James, author of the Fifty Shades of Grey series, is the best selling Kindle author and Kindle readers buy four times the number of books they did before owning one, according to other data.

The success of the Kindle range encouraged Amazon to launch the Kindle Fire tablet last year and the latest version of the e-reader, the touchscreen Kindle Touch, found its way to the UK earlier this year.

What do you know about tablets? Take our quiz!