canvas.pngFrom Shelf Awareness:

First signs of a Christmas e-bonanza: of the top six titles on USA Today’s bestseller list that appears tomorrow, e-book versions outsold the print versions. Of the top 50 titles on the list, 19 had higher sales of the e-book than the printed version. This marked the first time that USA Today’s top-50 list had more than two titles whose e-book version outsold the print edition.

“Lots of consumers woke up Christmas morning with new e-reading devices ready to load them up with e-books,” Paul Bogaards of Knopf commented. Last week Knopf sold about 165,000 e-book versions of the Millennium trilogy by Stieg Larsson and 155,000 print copies. The Larsson books held three of the top four spots on USA Today’s list.

Saying the e-jump in sales is not sustainable, Kelly Gallagher of Bowker nonetheless predicted that e-book sales could double this year from their level of about 9% of trade sales last year.

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