This holiday season appears to have created the conditions for another uplift in the digital content market.

Ebook spike

In ebooks, one publisher, Hachette UK, saw 86 percent more global ebooks sales this Christmas Day and Boxing Day than in 2011.

The publisher’s digital head George Walkley tells The Bookseller higher ereader and tablet sales, price promotion and greater digital availability lifted the market, including the long tail: “This is not just a frontlist phenomenon as over 6,500 of our titles saw digital sales in the last two days.”

The growth coincides with new Pew Internet data showing the proportion of Americans who read ebooks to increased 23 percent in 2012, from 16 percent a year ago.

Some independent authors using Kindle Direct Publishing reported far more modest upticks to their already small-scale sales. Their titles are relatively unknown and don’t benefit from bigger-hitting marketing campaigns of the kind that…