eBooks Outsell Printed Books on Amazon

Amazon announced today that Kindle eBooks are now outselling printed books on Amazon US. Coming less than four years after the introduction of the Kindle, and less than a year after eBooks first topped paperback sales on Amazon, it confirms that the book business is making the transition to electronic formats faster than the music business before it.

It's been an astonishing four years, and one can only imagine that the next four will see equally rapid change as the book market becomes centered on eBooks and print retreats into various niches.

For libraries, I think the time frame is important because this market transition is happening so much faster than many of today's cash-strapped libraries can adapt to it. If we don't want to be relegated to niche status as well, we have to re-tool much faster than we have been in the past.