Image by Yoshimasa Niwa via Flickr
So, earlier this week Amazon put out a press release singing the glories of the Kindle.
It has been a tough few weeks for the Kindle as things have looked up for the iPad while they’ve been caught in a bit of an e-reader price war.
So, you really can’t blame Amazon for putting out a release that trumpets their device.
“Kindle Device Unit Accelerate Each Month in Second Quarter; New $189 Price Results in Tipping Point for Growth” says the release’s headline.
Well, geez. Wow. That’s great, huh? They must be selling gazillions of Kindles by now. How many? Well, let’s look at the release again. Hmm. It’s not there.
How about in The New York Times story about Amazon’s announcement?
Wait. It’s not there either though the Times does repeat Amazon’s claim that “the growth rate of Kindle sales tripled after Amazon lowered the price of the device in late June.”
The problem is that unlike Apple — which regularly touts how many iPads it’s selling — Amazon has never released exact sales figures for the device. paidContent.org has quoted Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos saying they may never release those figures.
So, when they say that growth has tripled… from one to three? Seven to 21? One million to three million? Who knows?
Now, let’s look at the rest of the release: “Amazon.com Now Selling More Kindle Books Than Hardcover Books.”
Again, wow. The previously mentioned New York Times story refers to this news “as a day for the history books — if those will even exit in the future.”
And reading the release, you can’t blame them.
Amazon claims that “over the past three months, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 143 Kindle books. Over the past month, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 180 Kindle books.”
Again, wow.
But…
Since they don’t give us actual sales figures (other than the fact that James Patterson has sold 867,881 Kindle books, one of five writers to sell more than 500,000 KIndle books; the others being: Charlaine Harris, Stieg Larsson, Stephanie Meyer and Nora Roberts), we really don’t know what that means.
Yes, it’s a lot — based on those five writers alone — but how much? And what does it really mean?
Is it that — as Bezos claims — “the Kindle format has now overtaken the hardcover format.”
Is it that e-readers, whether they be Kindles or iPads, are the way things are going?
The second is more likely.
At the same time, as great as the devices are, as I’ve pointed out, e-readers will only really be the future when we figure out how to get them to everyone. Otherwise we need to keep helping libraries and schools make sure they have regular, old, printed books for kids.
Print may not be quite as robust as it used to be but it’s far from dead.
The City Room 