Publishers and authors have worried that e-books might hurt sales for hardcovers; Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com, and other online retailers commonly price top-selling e-releases at $9.99, which publishers say is too low and could cheapen the value of books overall.
Simon & Schuster chief executive Carolyn Reidy said the rise of e-books has led to a “cannibalizing’’ of new hardcover purchases.
“We believe that a large portion of the people who have bought e-readers are from the most devoted reading population,’’ Reidy said. “And if they like the e-readers, they are naturally going to convert because the e-books are so significantly less expensive.’’
E-books do expand the market for older books, Reidy added. Readers buying a new fiction work are inspired to buy many of the same author’s previous books, or “backlist,’’ in digital format because of the ease of ordering. Previously, buyers might have gone to a retail outlet and bought just one backlist title, she said.
The e-book for the season’s most popular release, Dan Brown’s “The Lost Symbol,’’ came out at the same time as the hardcover and has sold about 200,000 copies, or about 5 percent of the book’s total sales, nearly unthinkable before the rise of the Kindle and other digital devices.
“Authors get the most publicity at launch and need to strike while the iron is hot,’’ Amazon spokesman Andrew Herdener said. “If readers can’t get their preferred format at that moment, they may buy a different book or just not buy a book at all.’’
