May 19th, 2011
I have a great deal admiration for Amazon–it’s the one tech company that actually does something interesting in the real world–and makes money, too! Why Amazon is valued only around 10 times more than Twitter? Why is it valued only slightly more than Facebook? Such are the mysteries of Tech Bubble 2.0.
Anyway, one of the many interesting things Amazon has done well is the Kindle, yet unlike Apple–which talks up its products like a tout–Amazon keeps the Kindle in a black box. When is the next Kindle coming, what might it look like? Who knows. But the biggest mystery about the Kindle is how many of them have been sold. Amazon has always refused to say. Today, however, we might have gotten an oblique clue: Amazon announced that Kindle book sales now exceed hardcover and paperback sales combined. If there’s a vague guess at the monthly book sales totals for Amazon out there (and someone in the publishing industry must have an educated idea), then you might be able to plausibly work your way back to an estimate of Kindles.
Jeff May 20, 2011 at 9:54 am
If “Kindle book sales now exceed hardcover and paperback sales combined”, I can understand why Kindle sales figures don’t matter so much…I am willing to bet that Amazon’s share of the profit from a Kindle book is higher than that from a hardcopy book.