Stuart Gibbs

For the legions of you who follow this blog (6.5 million at last count), you know that I’m a little obsessed with tracking my sales.  Well, this year, for the first time, I was able to pay particularly close attention to the trending of my books over the holidays, and I noticed something that was pretty interesting.  (Although, in retrospect, it should have been obvious.)

Up until Christmas Day, my books were selling a bit better than usual.  This makes sense, because a lot of people are out there looking for books, and what better gift is there for a middle grade kid than a book, right?  So then, of course, sales dipped a bit right after the holiday, because no one needed to buy presents any more.

But that was only for actual, physical books.  E-books had the exact opposite trend.  They didn’t sell all that well before the holidays.  (Because, let’s face it, an e-book makes a rather lousy gift.  Yes, it’s a book, but it’s very hard to wrap.)  But then, on Christmas Day, sales went through the roof.  For Belly Up, Christmas was actually my best e-book selling day ever.  And sales of e-books have stayed pretty high ever since.

So what happened?  Obviously, a bunch of kids got e-readers for Christmas.

This is actually a pretty clever deal for all the e-reader makers.  And a rather good indicator that their master plan — sell e-readers at a loss and then make the money back in selling product — is working.  People give the e-reader as a gift — and then the first thing the recipient has to do is spend more money to buy the actual books.  (Because, let’s face it, an e-reader without any books on it is just a really expensive paperweight.)

I have no idea how many e-readers were sold this holiday season, but given the trend, I’m guessing it was a lot.

Just thought you’d like to know.