It’s not uncommon to read articles over the past couple of years praising the return of printed book sales (and the decline of digital). Here’s just one example from last March in the Guardian.
There’s a problem with that argument, though. And last week Quartz detailed the problem: sales data doesn’t take into account digital-only books self-published through Amazon. And by all estimations that’s quite a few sales to be excluding.
Part of the problem here is that when it comes to digital, things begin and end with Amazon. And they’re quite conservative about releasing any detailed sales numbers.