The Impact of Digitization on Print Book Sales: Analysis using Genre Exposure Heterogeneity

Abstract

The rise of digital channels has led to significant media market transformations. This paper studies whether and how digitization, sparked by the launch of Amazon Kindle in late 2007, affected print book sales. To estimate the impact, we exploit the quasi-experimental variation in the popularity of digital books across different genres or subgenres. We employ difference-in-differences and other identification strategies and use print sales data on a large representative sample of book titles published in the United States from 2004-15 across a variety of genres. Using various empirical specifications, we find that digitization significantly reduced print sales of adult fiction (the most popular genre in the ebook format) while having a much smaller impact on adult nonfiction and juvenile fiction. We further find that the effect for adult fiction is higher after the launch of the iPad (in 2010), and stronger for smaller publishers, the paperback version, and low-selling books. Our findings provide book publishers with key inputs for optimal pricing and release strategies of different book formats. Our study also extends the vast yet growing academic literature on the impact of digital distribution channels on existing sales channels and can inform the policy debate concerning third-party digitization and its effect on physical sales. 

Keywords: e-book, digital channel, publishing, cannibalization