The US publishing industry appears to be turning over a new leaf: ebook sales made up 22.5 percent of the industry's net revenue last year, according to a new survey from the Association of American Publishers. That's up from just 0.05 percent 10 years prior, when the AAP first began keeping track of ebook sales, and up from 16.98 percent in 2011. The categories that saw the biggest increase in ebook revenues included adult fiction, adult nonfiction, and religious books. Even more encouraging, the overall net revenue for the US publishing industry was $7.1 billion, up 6.2 percent from 2011.

However, the report wasn't all good news, indicating that the growth of ebook sales has slowed in the past three years and may be plateauing, as PaidContent points out. Other recent, separate analyst estimates have also indicated sales of ereaders are declining as those devices are supplanted by multi-function tablets. Barnes & Noble's latest Nook sales numbers can attest to that shift in devices. Still, the overall trend line seems quite clear: Americans still enjoy diving into a good book, but more and more of them prefer the digital version.