Amazon announced Thursday that demand for eBooks has surpassed demand for proper paper books. As of April 1, Amazon’s eBook sales outpaced printed books by about five percent.

"We had high hopes that this would happen eventually, but we never imagined it would happen this quickly," said Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. "We've been selling print books for 15 years and Kindle books for less than four years."

Sales of Kindle books jumped three fold in early 2011 compared to the same period last year. Amazon’s US Kindle store offers more than 950,000 titles, but Amazon did not release full sales figures. They appear impressive nonetheless.

More here.