Amazon Says E-Book Sales Outpace Hardcovers

Editor’s Note: Another great example of the rapidly changing way consumers are interacting with media.

Amazon.com Inc. said it reached a milestone, selling more e-books than hardbacks over the past three months.

But publishers said it is still too early to gauge for the entire industry whether the growth of e-books is cannibalizing sales of paperback books, a huge and crucial market.

In a statement Monday, Amazon's chief executive, Jeff Bezos, also countered the perception that sales of the company's Kindle e-reading device had suffered due to competition from other devices, such as Apple Inc.'s iPad.

Borders Launches eBook Store, BlackBerry and Android Apps. Access thousands of business sources not available on the free web. Learn More .He said the growth rate of Kindle device sales had "reached a tipping point," having tripled since the company lowered its price to $189 from $259 last month, following a similar move by competitor Barnes & Noble Inc. to cut the price on its Nook e-reader.

Amazon said Kindle device sales accelerated each month in the second quarter—both on a sequential month-over-month basis and on a year-over-year basis. But the statistics that Amazon shared were all relative—it didn't share actual sales figures. The company has never said how many Kindle devices or e-books it has sold.

Barnes & Noble, the nation's largest bookstore chain retailer, also has "seen a big uptick" since it cut the price of its Nook e-reader, a spokeswoman said.

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