Those attending the ECPA summit on digital publishing left with lots of statistics to propel their in-house discussions.

Almost one third (32%) of participants who responded to an instant texting poll at the event agreed with the statement that half of their sales would be digital within three years' time.

That feedback followed presentations in which they heard that:

*total trade books sales were down 24% in the first two months of the year

*total digital book sales grew 169% last year

*one leading general market publisher's e-book sales grew from 3% to 20% of total revenues in the last year.

Mark Nelson, strategic partner development manager for Google's e-books initiative, told summit attendees that religion titles were the fourth-highest category in the company's e-sales behind trade books, university texts and professional titles.

Weekly sales of religion titles had seen a steady increase, growing about 30%, he said. Ten religion titles had featured in Google's weekly top 100 e-books since the service launched. "Thousands of religion titles are being sold each week," Nelson said.

Michael Tamblyn, executive vice president of content, sales and merchandising for e-book retailer Kobo, noted that the biggest shifts in print-to-digital buying among readers was occurring in fiction and junior/young adult categories. "Digital is a revolution that should be happening with publishers, not to publishers," he said.

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