Bloomberg
U.S. Book Sales to Increase on E-Book Purchases, Goldman Says
Businessweek

By Greg Bensinger

April 12 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. book sales will rise 5.8 percent through 2015 as more people buy digital versions for Apple Inc.’s iPad and Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle, even as traditional book sales drop, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said.

Industrywide sales will increase to $24.9 billion in 2015 from $23.5 billion this year, Goldman Sachs analyst James Mitchell said in a report today. E-book sales will jump more than four-fold in the period to $3.19 million while print book sales probably will fall 4.9 percent to $21.7 billion, he said.

Apple’s share of the e-book market will surge from 10 percent this year to 33 percent in 2015, said Mitchell, who wrote the report along with analysts Ingrid Chung, Fred Krom and Jordan Monahan.

Amazon.com’s share of the e-book market likely will fall to 28 percent in 2015 from 50 percent this year, and Barnes & Noble Inc.’s share will remain at 15 percent from 2012 through 2015 after rising from 5 percent this year.

The report by the New York-based analysts doesn’t include sales of print books intended for readers in kindergarten through high school.

--Editors: Margot Slade, Cecile Daurat