Ebook sales growth as reported by the IDPF.

The July 2009 report by AAR for May 2009 sales figures shows “E-books sales jumped up by 196.6 percent for the month ($11.5 million), reflecting an increase of 166.7 percent for the year.”

When you compare this to the May 2008 report, when e-books sales saw a 24.3% increase for the month of May and a 31.4% increase for the year, it’s clear that e-book sales are starting to skyrocket.

The rest of the categories reflected:

• Adult Hardcover category was down by 40.7 percent in May with sales of $96.9 million; year-to-date sales were down by 23.7 percent.
• Adult Paperback sales increased 12.1 percent for the month ($113.2 million) but decreased by 19.7 percent for the year.
• Adult Mass Market category down 14.8 percent for May with sales totaling $64.7 million; sales were also down by 11.3 percent year-to-date.
• Children’s/YA Hardcover category rose 41.1 percent for the month with sales of $57.1 million, and sales for year-to-date were up by 36.4 percent.
• Children’s/YA Paperback category was up by 1.3 percent in May with sales totaling $43.4 million; sales increased by 1.8 percent for the year.
• Audio Book sales posted a decrease of 22.7 percent in May with sales totaling $10.7 million; sales for the whole year were down by 39.2 percent.
• Religious Books saw a decrease of 12.3 percent for the month with sales totaling $38.3 million; sales were down by 9.7 percent for the year.

Numbers from The Association of American Publishers: May 2009 Stats

Mike Shatzkin at The Idea Logic blog discussed this and the trend of ebooks in : Ebook growth explosive; serious disruptions around the corner.  He comments on the “Anecdotal information from big trade houses suggests that ebook sales are approaching 3% of total sales. But not all the books big houses sell are “ebookable” with current technology: much of the juvie list, most illustrated books, and books where tabular or graphic material is important might well not have been made into ebooks. So the number is larger, maybe 5% or 6%, of the straight narrative books. And because not all of everybody’s backlist is yet available in ebooks, sometimes because of rights issues and sometimes because it just hasn’t been digitized yet, the number is higher for straight narrative new titles. So maybe that’s at 8%. Now!”

Read Mike’s article to check out more information about the questions to ask regarding how e-books fit into the current publisher’s market, including bestseller lists, library sales and more.