Amazon Kindle, E-book, and Kindle Unlimited Statistics

Kindle is the biggest player in the ebook market, even though its share in Amazon book sales has been on the decline over the last few years.

Amazon is known to have sold at least 487 million Kindle books.
Amazon’s e-book market share is estimated at 67%
Including Kindle Unlimited, it is estimated that Amazon’s market share accounts for 83% of US ebook purchases.
In 2020, people spent $405 million on ebooks.
In 2011, Amazon sold more e-books than print books for the first time
However, now e-books make up 19% of total book sales by revenue
But the make up 36% of the number of books sold
This discrepancy is due to the fact that e-books are often cheaper than print books and there is a huge number of backlist books available for $1 on Kindle
Amazon Publishing ebooks often sell for around $5 or $6. Traditional publishers often sell their e-books for $10+
Subscriptions like Amazon Prime and Kindle Unlimited now earn close to $6 billion for Amazon
Kindle Unlimited platform has approximately 3 million subscribers
60% of the best-selling titles on Amazon are part of the Kindle Unlimited service
88% of the romance best-sellers are part of Kindle Unlimited
Amazon Kindle holds 72% of the e-reader market
It is estimated that Amazon has sold between 20 million and 90 million Kindle devices

How much does Kindle Unlimited cost in different countries?

There are more than 2 million titles available on Kindle Unlimited
The majority of these titles are: classics, self-published or published by Amazon
Kindle Unlimited users can read as many books as they want a month but can only have 10 titles on their device at any one time
More than 3/4ths of subscribers read at least 5 books per month
1/4 of subscribers claim to read as much as 20 books per month

The UK is the second-largest ebook market
It is estimated 15% of all English language ebook sales are made in the UK
In the UK book market, e-books make up 34% of all book sales
Amazon.co.uk is thought to be responsible for 87.9% of these e-book sales
In the UK, there is a 20% VAT (Value Added Tax) applied to ebook sales that is not applied to print book sales
In the UK, e-book sales are at their lowest point since 2012
95 million e-books were sold in 2020 – this fell to 80 million in 2021

In 2011, Amazon sold more e-books than print books for the first time
In 2021, it is estimated that Amazon sells 3 print books for every 1 e-book they sell
In 2020, e-book sales rose by 11% – many attribute this rise to the COVID-19 pandemic
In 2021, these sales decreased again by 3.7%

In 2021, Kindle Unlimited paid out $450 million to authors of self-published books enrolled in their program
This was a 19% increase on 2020
Kindle Unlimited are compensated per page read – a % the income from subscribers is split between authors proportionally based upon the number of pages of their books that have been read
Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) has enabled over 1 million authors to publish their books globally, including publishing options in 40 languages
Self-published books make up around 60% of the ebooks offered on Kindle Unlimited by Amazon

The five most popular e-book categories in 2022 are:

Rank	Genre
1	Religion and spirituality
2	Memoirs and biographies
3	Business and money
4	Self-help
5	Cookbooks, food, wine and spirits

Jeff Bezos instructed the Amazon staff to create the world’s best e-reader in 2004
The first Kindle was released on November 19, 2007
It retailed at $399
It sold out in less than 6 hours, surpassing all expectations and was not back in stock for a further 5 months
There are over 30 million people actively using Kindle devices in the USA alone
Amazon Kindle holds 72% of the e-reader market