The guy in the photo is reading off another gizmo rather than the Kindle—whatever is on the screen, be it a book or a calendar. And in fact I suspect that the K machine will be just one e-reading platform. But it still could do very well over the long run.
Short term? Kindle book sales may have doubled in the past two months. So says the Time site, repeating the lowdown from an Amazon insider. Read the item for full context, such as the fact that we’re talking about some tricky percentages, not solid unit sales figures. But here’s the fun stuff:
"According to a source at Amazon, ‘on a title-by-title basis, of the 130,000 titles available on Kindle and in physical form, Kindle sales now make up over 12% of sales for those titles,’" writes Time’s Josh Quittner.
"Amazon is notoriously tight lipped about sales data, and the new line of business that the Kindle represents for the online retail powerhouse has been especially frustrating for analysts and media to parse. At a technology trade conference in May, CEO Jeff Bezos said that Kindle sales accounted for 6% of book titles sold for the Kindle and in print. So Amazon appears to be selling more e-books."
Related: Low-Tech Warren Buffett "Probably" Getting Amazon’s High-Tech E-Book Reader, from CNBC.
Image credit: CC-licensed image from Nttrbx.
Having just gone home for 10 days and loaded up my Kindle for the next month I’m spending in Germany and traveling on business, I can well believe that Kindle sales are up. These days I don’t settle for the selection in airports or the books in English in foreign bookstores; I just load up my Kindle with books that I really want to read. I don’t even think about page turning or the whole delivery system anymore. The only downside, and it’s a pleasant downside, is explaining the Kindle to other travelers again and again and again.
Thanks for sharing your experiences, Katharine.
Haven’t run into any fellow Kindle owners in your travels, have you?
Keep us updated and pass on K tips. Email me and I’ll put ’em in the main part of the blog.
BTW, if you or anyone else interested in a particular topic would like to try our new experimental VR chatroom—well, give it a shot. See the post I’ll probably be making in the next twenty minutes.
I need to work most of the day on a book project, but the room is there for TeleRead community members to connect and get to know each other. Jon Noring will be helping out.
An aside to all: Jon and I will be looking for volunteers to help run the room and improve it. Just email me at rothman NOSPAM teleread.com with a cc to Jon at Jon NOSPAM noring.name.
Thanks,
David