[LINK] "Waterstones to stop selling Kindle as book sales surge"

[rfmcdonald]

The Guardian's Nicola Slawson reports that British bookselling chain Waterstones has decided to stop selling Kindles, on weak e-reader sales and stronger book sales.

Waterstones, which teamed up with Amazon in 2012 to sell the electronic reader in its stores, will use the display space for physical paperbacks and hardbacks instead.

James Daunt, the managing director of the retailer, told The Bookseller: “Sales of Kindles continue to be pitiful so we are taking the display space back in more and more shops.

[. . .]

The move comes after physical book sales at Waterstones rose 5% in December 2014 at the expense of the e-reader.

It appears this trend is not unique to Waterstones. Figures released by Nielsen Bookscan show sales of print books for the first 36 weeks of 2015 rose by 4.6% (worth £739.5m) when compared to the same period in 2014.