UK consumer digital sales up 318%

From the summary of the UK Publishers Association Statistics Yearbook 2010:

The PA Statistics Yearbook 2010 shows that total book sales in the UK amounted to £3.1bn in 2010. It also reports that:

• Total consumer digital sales (including consumer ebooks, downloads and audiobooks) showed the most rapid growth, having increased by 318% since 2009 from £4m to £16m. 
• Combined digital sales have increased by 38% on 2009 figures.
• The digital publishing market is now 6% of the combined physical and digital sales of UK publishers. The overall size of the digital market stands at £180m.
• Consumer digital sales of ebooks and downloads increased from 2% to 11% of all digital sales from 2009 to 2010.
• Academic and professional publishing digital sales have doubled in the past 3 years.
• Academic and professional sales amounted to 72% of all digital sales.

The Yearbook shows that whilst total book sales have increased by 2% in value terms to £3.1bn over the past year, the volume of sales has fallen by 3% to 739m units.  Export sales rose 4% to £1.25bn and represent 40% of publishers’ revenues.