Apr 16, 2011 08:54 GMT  ·  By

It appears that the rapid surge of e-reader sales led to an even faster rise in the sale of e-books, to the point where paper books lost a lot of their prospective purchasers, although this all is hardly a surprise.

E-readers were one of the two fastest growing product categories in terms of sales, early last year, the other one being netbooks.

This is because they were relatively cheap, single-purpose, easy to carry devices that removed one's need from logging around heavy stacks of paper whenever they wanted to read something interesting.

There is also the fact that e-readers usually have audio support, so one could listen to music when reading, or listen to audiobooks.

All in all, even though tablets grabbed most of the attention last year, e-book readers sold and sold, as did e-books themselves.

This phenomenon got more and more pronounced each month, leading to a massive figure of sales during the month of February, 2011 alone.

One will know that February has fewer working days than any other month so, technically, marketing performance should be a bit slow all around.

Even with this, however, sales of e-books still tripled compared to the same month of 2010, according to the Association of American Publishers.

For those that want numbers, the percentage growth was of three digits, 202.3%, while audiobooks went up 35.7% on-year.

“The February results reflect two core facts: people love books and publishers actively serve readers wherever they are. The public is embracing the breadth and variety of reading choices available to them. They have made e-Books permanent additions to their lifestyle while maintaining interest in print format books.” said Tom Allen, president and chief executive officer of AAP.

“By extending their work as developers, producers and marketers of high-quality content to emerging technologies, publishers are constantly redefining the timeless concept of ‘books.’”