E-book sales top 5 million for James Patterson

[January 05, 2012]  NEW YORK (AP) -- The sales machine that is James Patterson continues in the e-book era.

The Hachette Book Group announced Wednesday that e-book sales for the prolific novelist now top 5 million, with 2 million coming in just the past seven months.

Patterson hit the 1 million mark for e-books in July 2010, making him among the first authors to reach that milestone. Patterson also is thriving on paper. Hachette noted that hardcover and paperback sales for his work in 2011 topped 4.7 million copies, as tracked by Nielsen BookScan, which compiles around 75 percent of the non e-book market.

Patterson publishes several books a year and his best-sellers, many of them written with others, including "Kill Alex Cross" and "Now You See Her."

[Associated Press]

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