John, the numbers I quoted came from the source I linked in my post, the US government. However, these numbers included only retail book stores, i.e. those businesses that show SIC#5942 as their primary SIC. According to AMZN's S-1 from May, total US "retail sales of books" were estimated at $26bn (BTW, "mm" is millions) for 1996 while worldwide sales were estimated at $82bn. They do not give the source for this data, but the difference is, in all likelihood, due to the fact that a whole lot of books are sold outside of "book stores", i.e. drug stores, grocery stores, department stores, warehouse stores, book clubs, news stands, gift shops, etc. Other than book clubs, I think that most of these alternative channels get mostly impulse buys, cheap paperbacks or closeouts of surplus hardbacks, the kind of buying that is kind of tough to get on the Internet. It's also possible that the $26bn number included some periodicals and other publishing products.
As for BKS and BGP, those revenue figures do include periodicals, calendars, maps, coffee, etc.
In any case, $10bn in Internet sales out of $90bn worldwide sales in 2000 (AMZN's figure) seems quite a stretch to me when you consider that a very large part of that $90bn is either impulse buys, items of too little value to justify shipping costs for one or two items, or purchases where the buyer, though not buying on impulse, would not be willing to wait a week or even a day for delivery. Also, even by 2000, a large portion of book buyers still won't be on the Internet.
Bob |
