Where readers buy their ebooks? The short answer: Amazon and eBooks.com

We're on the final week 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 10. 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 (same)
2nd place: Kobo (same)

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

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

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

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
week10	2	6	0	1	2	2	6	1

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
week 10		10		1		0		6		13

To make sure our results are reliable and since our experiment is based on a list of books that was "new" 10 weeks ago, we decided to check last week's list of bestsellers in the same manner and see if there's any significant difference. So we looked into the New York Times' list of bestselling hardcover fiction and these are the search results we got for the first 10 books:

1. Tick Tock by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge
1st place: Amazon
2nd place: eBooks.com

2. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson
1st place: eBooks.com
2nd place: Amazon

3. The Inner Circle by Kate Brian
1st place: Simon & Schuster
2nd place: Amazon

4. Strategic Moves by Stuart Woods
1st place: eBooks.com
2nd place: Amazon

5. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
1st place: Amazon
2nd place: eBooks.com

6. Shadowfever by Karen Marie Moning
1st place: Amazon
2nd place: B&N

7. Dead or Alive by Tom Clancy
1st place: eBooks.com
2nd place: Amazon

8. The Sentry by Robert Crais
1st place: Amazon
2nd place: Amazon

9. The Confession by John Grisham
1st place: Amazon
2nd place: B&N

10. Room by Emma Donoghue
1st place: Waterstones.com
2nd place: eBooks.com

Here's the summary of the results:

Amazon		B&N		Publishers		Others		Google
1st	2nd	1st	2nd	1st	2nd	1st	2nd	1st	2nd
5	5	0	2	1	0	4	3	0	0

Here we also give 2 points for 1st place and 1 point for 2nd place:

	Amazon		B&N		Google		Publishers		Others
	15		2		0		2		11

Conclusions? Here we go:

1. Amazon is definitely no. 1 online bookstore when it comes to ebooks. Its reputation and online presence gives Amazon a significant advantage especially with new ebooks. We see though that Amazon's competitors are getting stronger and generating better results with ebooks that are in the market for more than just a couple of weeks.

2. Barnes and Noble? They get poor results that reflect their decline in the book market. If they count on online sales they should do a much better work to regain some lost power.

3. Google eBookstore is nowhere to be seen yet. The masters of online searches are failing in the place where they were supposed to excel. But they're still new in the game, so we'll have to wait and see. Right now it's a big disappointment.

4. Small online players (well relatively small) like eBooks.com or eBookMall can't be ignored any more and some websites like eBooks.com are showing a very strong performance, especially when it comes to new ebooks, are are second many times only to Amazon. This is a force that will only become stronger and if there's any threat to the leading position of Amazon, it's from this side of the map.

5. Independent bookstores - Not surprisingly are not part of the game yet. They're too small and unfortunately lack the resources and expertise to compete even with websites like eBooks.com.

We promise to redo this experiment in 6 months and see if anything has changed. In the meantime, 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!