E-Book Milestone for Amazon

Amazon recently announced <http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2010/07/20/amazoncom-now-selling-more-ebooks-hardocover> a milestone in electronic book sales: they now sell more e-books than hardcover books, despite the fact that hardcover book sales continue to increase. According to CEO Jeff Bezos, Amazon sells 143 Kindle books for every 100 hardcover books. In the last few weeks, that ratio has risen to 180:100.

Amazon has been clever in extending its business with moves such as launching a Kindle app on the Apple App Store as soon as the rival iPad was launched. Also, they have steadily reduced the price of the Kindle, with one version priced as low as $139, compared to $499 for the cheapest iPad.

Amazon got out in front of the electronic book trends almost 3 years ago when it launched the first generation of its Kindle e-reader. Despite the spectacular launch of Apple's iPad, the Kindle continues to be the top-selling e-reader on the market. Furthermore, the company also announced that the Kindle e-reader device has been the top-selling item on Amazon for the past two years.