Kindle Review – Kindle 2 Review, Books

29th October, 2008: If you’re just looking for the $50 off Kindle coupon, use oprah kindle coupon: OPRAHWINFREY. It’s only valid till Nov 1st. The rest of this article discusses the impact that Oprah’s recommendation has had on kindle sales. And some analysis of what effects kindle’s oprah love will have. 

October 27th Update: News of Oprah’s recommendation and the accompanying Oprah kindle discount code continues to spread. In the 2 days since I wrote this article there have been a LOT of websites that have featured the discount code and a few that have talked about Oprah as being the Kindle savior, and about the Kindle being Oprah’s favrite gadget and what it means.

And the effect is beginning to show up on Google Trends – Not since the release of the Kindle, has there been this much interest. Both Kindle and Amazon Kindle show the exact same graph so it seems Google is rolling in the two (and perhaps other search terms) to give a comprehensive picture of interest in the Kindle.

Oprah Effect Kindles Interest

As far as interest in the Kindle – continues to be high. Traffic to my blog is still at 3 times what it was before the Oprah recommendation. The number of people searching specifically for Oprah’s favorite gadget has gone down, although ‘oprah kindle’, and ‘kindle oprah’ are still popular searches.

Original Article:

This is a rather limited discussion and extremely unscientific. However, in the absence of figures from Amazon, I feel this is the closest we can get to an early assessment of the Oprah Effect on the Kindle. If you’re looking for the Kindle’s Amazon product page use this link. There are 4 main benefits that will derive for the Kindle and Amazon from Oprah’s ringing endorsement of the Kindle as her favorite gadget -

Short Term Kindle Interest and Product Awareness

Google Trends registers no significant increase in interest in the kindle – neither web searches nor news items. It doesn’t show up as a hot trend either. This is really strange given that people that were featured on Oprah earlier in the week do. So let’s move on to other indicators.

There have been a ton of articles discussing Oprah’s Kindle love fest, including New York Times, Financial Times (UK), Information Week,  Wired News, CNET News, Guardian (UK), Register (UK) and many more. A multitude of deal sites are highlighting the Kindle voucher code, and dozens (perhaps hundreds) of bloggers are blogging about it. Many widely read blogs like Henry Blodget, Crunchgear, Slashdot have also written about it.

Million of people will be exposed not only to the kindle, but also to the fact that it is endorsed by Oprah. Additionally, this really increases the number of websites linking to, and talking about, the Kindle and has a huge positive long term effect.

In terms of increased interest, my blog traffic went up intially to double and then to quadruple.

Oprah Effect on Amazon Kindle

1. 22nd – normal traffic.
2. 23rd – Traffic approximately doubles.
3. 24th – Traffic quadruples. nearly the whole increase in traffic is people looking for Oprah’s favorite gadget.
4. 25th – Traffic is quadruple.
5. 26th – Traffic is triple.
6. 27th – Traffic is looking like it’ll be triple what it’d be. This might have been affected by a page loading problem I was having (thanks Vodpod) or not.

Mind you, my blog doesn’t rank at the top of google for amazon kindle, and kindle – the terms that almost certainly saw the largest increases. So there’s a pretty high chance the quadruple increase in traffic is actually an under-representation of the Oprah effect.  Add in people going straight to Amazon, and from other websites like Oprah’s site, and we’re talking about a really huge increase in people visiting the Kindle: Amazon product page.

Increased Kindle Purchases in the short term due to Oprah’s Kindle recommendation. 

 While the number of people visiting my blog quadrupled on Friday (and is staying at quadruple levels on Saturday) the number of people visiting the Amazon Kindle page has exploded – 40 times the normal number. I can’t talk about conversion figures so I’ll leave that guessing to you. However, suffice it to say that people are not just stopping to see what Oprah’s favorite gadget is – they’re going to Amazon to get all the information – to a Kindle product page that has 5,100+ reviews and an overall 4 stars out of 5 rating.

Also, the $50 off Kindle voucher really has an impact. There are quite a few more searches for Kindle discounts and the $50 addresses the key price point barrier to some extent. $309 is a much easier price to stomach than $359. This combination of two factors – Oprah’s recommendation and a lower price – definitely would increase the likelihood of a purchase.

If I had to hazard a guess at exactly how many purchases will be made in the last 10 days of October I’d guess approximately 105,000 – triple of what the best conservative guesstimate monthly sale rate is.

A telling fact is that the Kindle is still in stock. This means that the number of sales is not explosive enough to outpace Amazon’s existing stock. It’s important to keep in mind that the number of Kindle displays Amazon can get every month is severely restricted and therefore a validation of the 105,000 more Kindles sold figure would be the Kindle becoming out of stock sometime in the next 5-10 days.  

The huge spike in Kindle interest and potentially in Kindle sales is of course a short term effect. So lets look at what the long term ramifications are -

Increased Kindle Purchases in the long term due to Oprah’s recommendation.

Contrary to the adage ‘Familiarity breeds contempt’ research has shown that the more we see of something or someone the more we like it. This is the reason that advertisers and marketers are trying to get multiple favorable product impressions on audiences.

Millions of people knew about the Kindle and now they see Oprah’s positive endorsement. Millions more have their first exposure to the Kindle, and its a hugely positive one thanks to Oprah saying ‘it changed her life’. Amazon’s main page is waiting to remind them of it. Even more will see Oprah’s endorsement on Amazon’s main page and read about it in newspapers and blogs. This is not an advertisement – it really is a solid endorsement. There is no exchange of money and there is no reason for Oprah to make up her love for the Kindle.  Oprah’s recommendation holds a ton of weight amongst people, and even more so amongst Amazon’s target audience for the Kindle.

Also, an endorsement for the Kindle makes the gap between the Kindle and the Sony even bigger. It really is Oprah + free wireless + Amazon’s store versus Sony’s new device.

Increase in the Number of Amazon Kindle Owners and spread of the Kindle Gospel

Most Kindle owners love the Kindle - just check out the kindle social network. The more people that own the Kindle, more word will spread. Amazon has a ‘See a Kindle in Your City’ forum – people love the Kindle so much they’re willing to show it off to others for free.

There really is a certain number of Kindle owners at which the network effects will really begin to take off. And Oprah’s endorsement and the subsequent purchases brings us so much closer. Are you considering a Kindle? If you love books, I really think you should take a look.