By NYU Staff

This holiday season, the Kindle is the must-have in a lot of American households. It is Amazon’s top seller right now, and the burgeoning demand for electronic readers is making the Kindle, the front runner in the e-reader race, very attractive as a stocking stuffer. 

Jeffrey Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, recently told The New York Times that for every 100 copies of a physical book they sell, where we have the Kindle edition, we will sell 48 copies of the Kindle edition.

“It won’t be too long before we’re selling more electronic books than we are physical books. It’s astonishing,” he told reporter Deborah Solomon. 

But it may not be a cheery Christmas for the authors, as Amazon gives 35% for every book sold. When asked about this breakdown, Solomon and Bezos had an interesting exchange:

“Basically you submit the book, you set the price for it, we charge the customer and then we give you 35 percent of the revenue,” said Bezos in the interview. 

The interview continues:

And Amazon keeps 65 percent? That sounds like a lot. 
Does it? You’re an author, what does your royalty check look like? Are your royalties 35 percent?

No. Let’s not have that conversation. 
O.K., I think we’re done.

It seems that that number isn’t going to budge any time soon and certainly not over the next month. 

Meanwhile, according to the Association of American Publishers, an estimated $24.3 billion worth of books were sold in the U.S. in 2008.  But sales of electronics books are growing quickly, nonetheless. Sales are up 68 percent over the previous year when the number of e-books sold made up a mere $113 million in sales. 

Should be interesting to see where that number ends up for 2009.