Bowker, a ProQuest affiliate, has released a new research study about e-retailers. According to the study, the rise in e-book reading in the US and UK over the past three years has been a key driver in the market share gains of e-retailers.
In the US, e-retailers accounted for 44 percent of book purchases by volume in 2012, up from 25 percent in 2010. In the UK the rise has been somewhat less dramatic but still significant, up from 25 percent in January-November 2010, to 38 percent in the same period in 2012.
E-retailers' market share increases come at the expense of chain booksellers in the US, where their market share has dropped from 32 percent to 19 percent of volume. This sector has proved more resilient in the UK, but even there the bookshop share as a whole fell from 43 percent during January-November 2010 to 37 percent in the equivalent months in 2012.
In November 2012, 28 percent of all book purchases in the US were in e-book format -- a dramatic rise from six percent in November 2010. In the UK, the e-book share of the market reached a peak of 13 percent in July 2012, at the height of the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon, but fell back to about nine percent in November 2012.
