If you had asked me to guess, I would have said that 60-70% of REWORK sales came from ebooks. It’s a book targeted towards starters, people eager to jump on new trends and technologies, and our natural sphere of influence is with web people. Surely most would be springing for the Kindle or iBookstore versions, right? Wrong.

We’ve sold about 170,000 copies of REWORK across all media. Only 16% of those sales came ebooks. That’s only slightly higher than the 11% of buyers who went for the audio book. In other words, about three quarters of sales came from good ol’ hardcover books.

Lately, things have been improving somewhat for the ebooks. Our most recent statement shows that 19% of new sales came from ebooks. So things are changing, but not nearly as fast as I would have guessed.

Perhaps a lot of people are gifting REWORK to others (I’ve heard from many employees handing it to their boss!) and it’s easier to give a physical book than an electronic one. Perhaps people are smitten with the beautiful drawings of Mike Rohde and want them in the beautiful print. Perhaps physical books are just still a great way to read.