Amazon started in 1994 selling books. Decades later, this original business is thriving and massively outpacing its digital cousin, e-books.
That’s according to a detailed internal document obtained by Business Insider that reveals a wealth of new information and insights about Amazon’s book business and the broader publishing landscape.
Reliable data on this industry is limited or strictly controlled, so it is sometimes difficult to consider the scope of the book’s business. That makes Amazon’s new data particularly telling, especially since antitrust questions still remain about the company’s dominance in the sector.
In the first 10 months of 2022, Amazon had $16.9 billion in gross merchandise sales from its books category, the filing shows. The GMS measures the total sales volume of print and digital books, including e-books and audiobooks.
That translates to nearly $1.7 billion in average monthly book sales volume, or roughly $400 million per week. In the US alone, Amazon recorded about $9.5 billion in total book sales volume in those 10 months.
This shows how well Amazon has done in keeping its original business thriving over almost three decades. It also reveals how physical books have endured as a reading format, while e-books have not lived up to their early promise when Amazon launched the Kindle e-reader in 2007.
“There’s nothing inherently wrong with books in print. Many people, myself included, tend to prefer holding a book in their hands and reading a printed book,” said John Warren, a director and professor of associate of the George Washington University publishing program.
“monopoly power”
Amazon’s books business has drawn antitrust scrutiny over the years. The Federal Trade Commission’s case against Amazon last year cited Amazon’s books segment, while the American Booksellers Association urged the FTC and Justice Department to focus on the company’s “monopoly power” over the market.
The document received by BI is 25 pages long and is marked as confidential. Used for a weekly Amazon business review. The company does not publicly disclose book sales, nor does it provide a revenue breakdown for each retail category.
In an email to BI, Amazon spokeswoman Lindsay Hamilton said the company “continues to operate in a competitive bookselling environment,” where online retailers, national chains and independent booksellers have “grown significantly” in recent years. last.
The US accounts for over half of sales
The document reveals some staggering numbers that show just how big Amazon’s book business is.
Here are some salient sales figures:
- Global: In January 2022, Amazon sold books worth just over $2 billion. Sales volume fell to about $1.5 billion to $1.8 billion in the following months.
- USA: The US market is the largest for Amazon, accounting for over half of all GMS books. It had over $1.1 billion of GMS in January and August of 2022. In other months, GMS was around $900 million.
- Other markets: The three largest overseas markets were the UK, Germany and Japan. Each country had between $130 million and $190 million in GMS books each month. FRITES, a geographic group including France, Italy and Spain, was similar in size.
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Japanese manga: The Japanese manga, or comic book market, was large enough to appear as its own line item. Amazon sold more than $35 million worth of manga each month, or roughly 11,000 units.
And here are the unit sales figures:
- Global: Amazon sold an average of 175 million books (print and digital) each month during this period. In January 2022, it reported more than 193 million unit sales, but in other months, it was closer to 170 million.
- USA: In the US market, Amazon sold an average of 87 million books per month in this period. During the first 10 months of 2022, the company sold 456.5 million print books and 419.8 million digital books.
- Other markets: In Japan, the company sold about 25 million units per month. The UK, German and FRITES markets were between 11 million and 21 million units per month.
Mixed signals
Given that Amazon’s GMS for books in the first 10 months of 2022 was close to $17 billion, it’s likely that the company sold more than $20 billion worth of books for the entire year.
While Amazon is a powerful player in the book business, it’s hard to say whether the company has a negative impact on the market. Global book sales grew 8.8% in 2023 from 2019, according to industry data provider Circana. And the American Library Association reported an 11% increase in membership and 200 new independent bookstore openings in 2023.
Retailers are showing mixed signals. Barnes & Noble is on pace to open 50 new stores in 2024, the highest number of store openings in 15 years. But Costco recently decided to stop selling books, unless it’s the holidays or other special occasions. Booktopia, an online bookseller in Australia, is struggling to survive.
E-books vs. print
One notable data point in Amazon’s document is the difference between Amazon’s print and e-book revenue.
In the first 10 months of 2022, Amazon sold more than $7.4 billion in US print books, while GMS e-books were about $2 billion.
The gap in the average selling price for the two book formats was also evident. According to the document, print books had an average selling price of about $15 versus roughly $4.50 for e-books.
While Amazon was a pioneer in e-books, this data shows that digital book formats may not have grown as quickly as many industry experts once predicted.
A 2022 study by the Pew Research Center showed that print book readers in the US still outnumbered e-book readers, with 65% of adults saying they had read a print book in the past 12 months compared to 30% who chose create an e-book.
Warren, an associate professor at George Washington University, told BI that e-books were once predicted to take nearly 80% of the market. But these predictions have largely failed to live up to expectations, as print books are still the preferred mode of reading for many people. Still, he said, digital formats represent an “increasingly important part” of most publishers’ revenues.
Amazon statement
Hamilton, the Amazon spokesman, shared some other thoughts, touching on the company’s internal document and book business in an emailed statement:
“Amazon has a written narrative culture, which means that at any given time there are thousands of documents moving around the company, providing information at one point in time and with varying levels of review and accuracy,” Hamilton wrote. “We’re on a mission to inspire customers to read more and get the most out of reading. We offer innovative, unparalleled reading experiences; the widest selection possible; options for our customers to read how they want , when they want; and a variety of affordable ways to read.”
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