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

We study whether the introduction of e-readers, most notably the launch of Amazon Kindle in late 2007, led to a reduction in print book sales. To estimate the impact, we exploit the quasi-experimental variation in how digital books are expected to affect print book sales in different genres or sub-genres such as fiction, non-fiction, juvenile or religion. We employ a difference-in-differences identification strategy and use print sales data on almost the entire population of book titles published in the United States between 2004-15 across a variety of genres. We find that, on an average, print sales of adult fiction books (the most popular genre in the e-book format) decreased by about 30% due to the introduction of digital readers. We also find that the effect is stronger for paperback version and less popular books