The signs of the stagnation on the ebook market were visible some time ago, and this infographic summarizes the trend.
[ef-archive number=2 tag=”lists” ]
The chart was shared on Forbes by Niall McCarthy, data journalist at Statista, the world’s largest statistics portal.
The global ebook industry is worth $8.5 billion. The number seems staggering, but on the other side it’s still over six times less than print’s $53.9 billion.
Most of all, ebook sales growth is flattening. In the U.S. only, it was a mere 5% in 2013. Revenue has also stagnated at around $3 billion.
The infographic is based on Statista report on the global ebook industry. The highlights are:
- ebook sales as a percentage of total book sales worldwide are 12.3%,
- ebook market share in Europe reached 4.5%,
- global ebook reader shipments is estimated at 28.9 million,
- consumer electronic book publishing revenue worldwide is $14.55 billion.
An interesting fact from the report (the full version is available for premium users), is that Smashwords is the largest self-publishing company in the U.S., by number of ebooks published.
Click or tap on the image below to see it in full resolution.
More infographics about ebooks, digital publishing, and libraries:
[ef-archive number=5 tag=”infographics”]
