The Year's Best Science Fiction, Volume 29

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Like last year, the big story in 2011 continues to be the explosion in e-book sales, which have been dramatic enough, and accrued fast enough, to make some commentators speculate that e-books will eventually drive physical print books out of existence altogether. I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon, if it ever does, but the e-book revolution has been impressive nevertheless, and shows no sign of losing momentum, especially with new devices like the Kindle Fire coming on sale, and no doubt other even more sophisticated devices waiting in the wings.

According to BookStats, a joint-research venture between the Book Industry Study Group and the Association of American Publishers, e-book sales jumped to $863.7 million in 2010 from $61.8 million in 2008. No reliable overall figures for 2011 are yet available, but one publisher predicted that e-books could account for as much as 40 percent of total revenue by the end of 2012. Considering that it’s been estimated that one in five U.S. adults are reading e-books on a variety of devices, from dedicated e-readers to media tablets, and that there was a major surge in e-book sales after the 2011 holiday season (all those people looking for something to read on the devices they’d gotten for Christmas presents), that could well turn out to be true. The AAP report for September 2011 shows e-book sales up 100 percent to $80.3 million. Year-to-date figures show e-books up 137.9 percent at $727.7 million. Barnes & Noble’s second-quarter sales report (for the period ending October 29, 2011) shows NOOK sales (for both the devices themselves and for e-books) rising 85 percent to $220 million, “four times what they were in the comparable period last year,” according to CEO William Lynch.

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