Ink to pixels: E-books outsell print books at Amazon

But people should not exile their bookshelves to storage quite yet,many analysts warned. Over all,e-books account for only about 14 of all general consumer fiction and nonfiction books sold,according to Forrester Research.

E-book reading is a big deal and its going to continue to be even bigger, said James McQuivey,a digital media analyst at Forrester. But we are not to the point where e-books are a majority of unit sales and certainly not a majority of revenue.

Amazons latest milestone was unsurprising to industry observers. It said last July that sales of e-books outnumbered hardcover books and said in January the same was true for paperbacks. For Amazon,though,the milestone is proof that it has successfully leapt from a print business to a digital one,a transition that has challenged most companies that sell media.