July E-Book Sales at $82.6M

July e-book sales came in at $82.6M, more than double the amount from July of last year, and slightly above June’s total of $80.2M.

July 2011 e-book sales: $82.6M

The recap for the past 13 months:

• July 2010: $40.8 M
• Aug 2010: $39.0 M
• Sep 2010: $39.9 M
• Oct 2010: $40.7 M
• Nov 2010: $46.6 M
• Dec 2010: $49.5 M
• Jan 2011: $69.9 M
• Feb 2011: $90.3 M
• Mar 2011: $69.0 M
• Apr 2011: $72.8 M
• May 2011: $87.7 M
• June 2011: $80.2 M
• July 2011: $82.6M

Sadly, it seems that Publisher’s Weekly has stopped giving us much data regarding print book sales, making it harder to compare and analyze the data, as I am wont to do. All they provided this month was the adult hardcover figure, which was $91.2M. They did tell us that:

Despite the strong July performance, adult hardcover sales were down 17.8% for the seven month period, while e-book sales were up 152.8%, to $560.5 million. With the exception of adult hardcover, sales were down in all other print trade segments in July.

UPDATE: Undaunted, I went back and estimated sales based on the percent changes provided and my records of last year’s sales figures, and came up with the following chart of e-book sales as a percentage of total e-book plus print book sales.

Percentage of e-book sales to total print + e-book sales

The raw figures: 23.4% for January, 26.6% in February, 16.9% in March, 18.8% in April, 23.5% in May, and 26.9% in June. Note the huge bump just after the holidays (as people fill up the new e-readers they got as gifts), and then the reversion to the continuing upward trend thereafter.