Where readers buy their ebooks? Amazon is still number one but getting weaker!

We're on week 9 of our 10-week ebook experiment. Like all experiments, it began with a (research) question: Where will readers look to buy their ebooks? Following the launch of Google eBookstore, its collaboration with independent bookstores, and when Amazon, B&N, Borders and other bookstores are fighting on their market share, competition on the dollars spent by ebook buyers is getting fierce.

Our assumption is that many readers will look for e-books using a search engine and will buy from one of the first results of their search. So we randomly chose 10 books of the New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2010 and googled each title with the word ebook and wrote down the first two results we got. We redo it every Thursday for 10 weeks and will see if there are any changes in the search results.

Here are the results for week 9. In brackets you'll see the last week's results. If they were the same we just wrote 'same'. And if you click on the titles, you will be forwarded to the first place on the title's search):

1. Girl by the Road at Night by David Rabe
1st place: Simon & Schuster (same)
2nd place: Simon & Schuster (same)

2. The Long Song by Andrea Levy
1st place: Amazon.com (same)
2nd place: Amazon.com (same)

3. The New Yorker Stories by Ann Beattie
1st place: Amazon.com (same)
2nd place: Amazon.com (same)

4. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
1st place: Powell's Books (same)
2nd place: Amazon.com (same)

5. Big Girls Don't Cry by Rebecca Traister
1st place: Simon & Schuster (same)
2nd place: Simon & Schuster (same)

6. The Price of Altruism by Oren Harman
1st place: Kobo (Amazon)
2nd place: Kobo (same)

7. INSECTOPEDIA by Hugh Raffles
1st place: Amazon.com (same)
2nd place: eBookMall (Amazon)

8. Country Driving by Peter Hessler
1st place: Barnes & Noble (Goodreads)
2nd place: iFlow Reader (B&N)

9. The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
1st place: Amazon.com (eBooks.com)
2nd place: Random House (Amazon)

10. Hitch 22 by Christopher Hitchens
1st place: Atheist Movies (same)
2nd place: Amazon.com (same)

Here's the summary of the results:

	Amazon		B&N		Publishers		Others
	1st	2nd	1st	2nd	1st	2nd	1st	2nd
week 1	6	3	1	2	3	4	0	1
week2	6	4	1	3	3	3	0	0
week3	6	2	1	2	3	4	0	2
week4	6	3	2	1	2	4	0	2
week5	5	4	1	2	2	3	2	1
week6	5	3	0	2	3	3	2	2
week7	4	5	0	2	3	1	3	2
week8	4	6	0	1	2	2	4	1
week9	4	4	1	0	2	3	3	3

We give 2 points for 1st place and 1 point for 2nd place:

		Amazon		B&N		Google		Publishers		Others
week 1		15		4		0		10		1
week 2		16		5		0		9		0
week 3		14		4		0		10		2
week 4		15		5		0		8		2
week 5		14		4		0		7		5
week 6		13		2		0		9		6
week 7		13		2		0		7		8
week 8		14		1		0		6		9
week 9		12		2		0		7		9

So what do have here? Amazon is still number one, but this is their worst performance so far with only 12 points and just 3 points atop of 'others'. On the other hand, the 'Others' segment is continuing to show strength, as it's the second week they reach 9 points. B&N? Almost gone. Google eBookstore? Still nowhere to be seen.

Conclusions? We're still one more week to go, so we'll wait with the conclusions until then. Still, we can definitely say that we see growing presence of smaller players that might even shake a little the dominance of Amazon. Anyway, it's certainly getting more interesting! See you next Thursday.

You can find all the survey results so far at www.ecolibris.net/buying_ebooks.asp

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!