By Siobhan O’Leary
German book chain Thalia reported its highest sales to date for its Oyo Reader in December, according to buchreport. The device — which reached stores in November — was one of Thalia’s top 5 bestselling products and, perhaps surprisingly, most of them were sold in-store rather than online. Thalia witnessed a corresponding increase in e-book sales, with figures jumping 200% over the same period in 2009.
Competitors experienced similar levels of success. Without stating specific figures, Weltbild CEO Klaus Driever told buchreport that the company sold through its fourth batch of the e-reader Aluratek Libre before Christmas. E-book sales also increased significantly for Libri, aided by the fact that the wholesaler added 11,000 new titles to its e-book program in the second half of 2010.
Though German e-book sales are still negligible when compared to print sales, they more than quadrupled on weltbild-ebooks.de compared to the previous year, with fiction titles in particular demand.
Despite a weaker December (-5%), the German publishing industry as a whole saw a slight increase in sales of 0.4% over 2009, according to Branchen-Monitor Buch, taking into account brick and mortar book retailers, department stores and online sales.
Additional sources: Borsenblatt
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