Book Sales | featured news

Even without best sellers on the scale of last year’s Steve Jobs biography, owners of independent bookstores say sales are good, and that Kobo e-readers have been a boon.

Girl wonder beats boy wizard. The Hunger Games trilogy has surpassed the Harry Potter books to become the best-selling series on Amazon.com, the company announced Friday.

For the first time, revenue from the sale of e-books has outstripped revenue from hardcover sales. Using information compiled from 1,189 publishers, the Association of American Publishers reports that for the first quarter of 2012, adult e-books sales were $282.3 million, up 28% from last year.

President Barack Obama and his family paid more than $160,000 in federal taxes last year on earnings of $789,674, the White House said Friday. The president's 2011 federal income tax return shows that about half of the first family's income is the president's salary. The rest comes from sales of Obama's books.

Amazon.com Inc. on Thursday said that, after less than four years of selling electronic books, it's now selling more of them than printed books. The online retailer said that since April 1, it has sold 105 e-books for every 100 printed books, including printed books for which there is no electronic edition. The comparison excludes free e-books, which would tip the scales further if they were included.

At the Los Angeles Festival of Books, some of the best booksellers on the West Coast shared strategies that helped them survive during these challenging times for local bookstores. Below, we’ve collected seven tips from these innovative booksellers.

I stared at my computer screen. There, sitting in my inbox was an email that confirmed the world around me had gone totally and utterly, bone-fide, stark-raving, strait-jacket wearing, mad. I read the first line. It said:“Shed! Your book is number 44 on Amazon... Congratulations!”

In January's Association of American Publishers (AAP) report, they revealed that eBook net sales went from last year's 32.4 million dollars to 69.9 million dollars, increasing by 115.8 percent.

Weeks after Amazon.com said that it is now selling more electronic books than hardcovers, a leading book publisher said one of its prominent new titles is generating greater e-book unit sales than hardcover unit sales during its first week on sale.

Kate Gosselin's latest book isn't exactly flying off the shelves. Since its April 13 release, "I Just Want You to Know: Letters to My Kids on Love, Faith, and Family" has sold just 10,084 copies, according to national book sales tracker Bookscan. The non-fiction title debuted at #11 on the New York Times' non fiction bestseller list, and at #103 on USA Today's bestsellers chart. By Thursday afternoon, its Amazon.com rank was #862.