One year ago, reporting trade e-book sales statistics for the first quarter of 2009. we wrote “We’re running out of superlatives.” What inspired our hyperbole were $26 million in sales, exceeding 2008′s first quarter by 131%. Having exhausted our purple prose a year ago, what’s left for us to say about the $91,000,000 first quarter sales posted in 2010, 3 1/2 times those of the same period a year ago. How about this: Q1-10 almost matches the total sales for all of 2006 ($20 M), 2007 ($31.2 M) and 2008 ($53.5 M).

And March 2010? $28.5 million, almost three times that of the same month one year ago.

These statistics compliments of the Association of American Publishers in conjunction with the International Digital Publishing Forum, which reminds us that:

* This data represents United States revenues only
* This data represents only trade e-book sales via wholesale channels. Retail numbers may be as much as double the above figures due to industry wholesale discounts.
* This data represents only data submitted from approx. 12 to 15 trade publishers
* This data does not include library, educational or professional electronic sales
* The numbers reflect the wholesale revenues of publishers
* The definition used for reporting electronic book sales is “All books delivered electronically over the Internet or to hand-held reading devices”

Richard Curtis