I’ve been blogging about the Amazon Kindle Reader for 10 months now (and running a kindle forum/social network for 3 months). There are some really interesting insights about the amazon, the kindle, and the typical owner of the kindle reader that I’ve gathered, and one of the most important is this -
Amazon is cornering the market on the most profitable, and most influential book purchasing customers.
I’d argue that the Kindle owner is someone who love books, reads a lot, and buys a lot of books. Amazon themselves have released some figures that strengthen this argument -
- 10% of book units purchased in the last quarter were Kindle book sales.
- The typical Kindle owner makes 2.7 times the number of purchases after buying the kindle.
I think that 2. is explained by the fact that Kindle books are half the price, buying Kindle books is straightforward and impulse driven, and that owning the Kindle makes a purchase from Amazon much more likely.
1. is the truly impressive statistic – This hints at the fact that Amazon is capturing a part of the top 20% of customers that account for 80% of book purchases. This is of course a simplification based on the Pareto Principle - however, one that makes a lot of sense, and seems to be supported by the data. Even when I look at the kindle social network there are users with profile information like -
Kindle Owner Profile
These are just 2 examples – there are a lot of people with answers like this, or dozens of favorites listed.
Amazon with its Kindle reader is capturing the most lucrative customers – If i were running a corner bookstore, or even a large chain of bookstores, I’d be very, very worried. Once your top customers own a Kindle, you’ll be competing against lower prices, an always-on delivery mechanism, and what in the near future will be an immense range of books.
The other aspect of getting the top customers is the power of their word of mouth. As soon as Amazon introduces an effective social network on the kindle (or opens up its platform and lets someone else do it) you have crowd intelligence of the best sort – people who actually know what they’re talking about. This is already manifesting itself in the ‘See a Kindle in Your City’ forum at Amazon – Kindle Owners are passionate enough to show off their Kindle Reader to prospective owners (at their own cost). Imagine the same effect when it comes to book reviews and recommendations.
Books released on the Kindle will get read sooner, reviewed and recommended soner, and most importantly their purchases will spread faster than ever before. Currently, when I get a strong recommendation from a friend it’s a few days before I get around to a bookstore and take a look at it (of course, with the exception of getting lent a copy which actually is zero profit to author or publisher). With the Kindle Reader, it’s a minute or two to download a sample chapter or buy the book.
An amazon kindle ebook reader fundamentally changes the book industry – in more ways than we can imagine. And it’s becoming very clear to me why Amazon is keeping the Kindle Reader closed. They don’t just want to be the book store of choice – Amazon wants to be the new book industry, and the Amazon Kindle ebook Reader is what Amazon hopes will take it there (btw the same with Google – they don’t just want to be search engine of choice – they want to be the new internet; not just organize the world’s information, but also be the guardian that grants access to all the world’s information).
Filed under: kindle, thoughts Tagged: | amazon kindle reader, Kindle ebook reader, kindle owner, kindle reader
