May 19, 2011 14:50 GMT  ·  By

It may be the third time we hear the same kind of boasting from Amazon, but this time it means it, the company claims. While it has been saying first that Kindle book sales outnumber hardcover sales and later paperbacks, Amazon has announced that it is now selling more ebooks than paper books on its site.

For the past couple of months or so, since April 1st, Amazon has sold 105 digital books for every 100 physical books. The ebook is no longer a novelty.

"Customers are now choosing Kindle books more often than print books. We had high hopes that this would happen eventually, but we never imagined it would happen this quickly - we've been selling print books for 15 years and Kindle books for less than four years," Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, said.

Amazon doesn't include free ebook downloads in the stats, the company is offering more free Kindle books, millions of them, than it is selling.

The company has sold three times as many Kindle books since the start of the year than it did in the same period of 2010.

There are now over 950,000 books for sale in the Kindle store. Unsurprisingly, price is a strong incentive, 750,000 of those books are priced at below $10.

Amazon is also touting the newest member of the Kindle family, the advertising-supported one which goes for just $114. It is now the best selling version.

"In addition, we're excited by the response to Kindle with Special Offers for only $114, which has quickly become the bestselling member of the Kindle family," Bezzos said. "We continue to receive positive comments from customers on the low $114 price and the money-saving special offers," he added.

At this point, there is no denying that ebooks are the future. In fact, they're the present, if you live in the US anyway. While printed books are not going away any time soon, the convenience factor is hard to argue against.