Kindle Review – Kindle Fire Review, Kindle 4 Review

The unexplained kindle delays, lack of word on Kindle 2.0 release date, and complete lack of Kindle Sales figures all add up to lots of news articles, blog posts and other free press for Amazon. I really don’t see why they’d release any official figures and kill all the free Kindle press and slow down Kindle 2.0 buzz. The three figures that are personally very interesting to me are -

1. How many Kindles did Amazon sell after the Oprah announcement through the Kindle going out of stock?
2. How many Kindles is Amazon selling per day currently, despite the 8-10 week delays?
3. A good estimate of the amount of Kindle Sales Amazon lost out on this Christmas Season due to the Kindle being out of stock.

Of course, there’s little chance Amazon releases these figures. My guesses are -

1. Amazon sold between 70,000 and 100,000 Kindles in the 8 days from the Oprah endorsement through the Kindle becoming out of stock on November 1st. That’s 8,000-12,000 kindles a day.
2. Amazon was selling between 1,500 and 2,500 Kindles a day until Nov 24th, when the delays shot up to 11-13 weeks.
3. Amazon is currently selling between 500 and 700 Kindles a day right now.  

Assuming that Kindle sales would drop a bit as the Oprah effect dissipated, and that the drop in sales would be somewhat offset by the Christmas effect, Amazon probably missed out on selling another 195,000 or so of Kindles.

This is pure speculation, and please treat it as such.

My overall estimate for total Kindle sales through end of 2008 is between 240K and 600K, with the single likeliest figure being around half a million kindles sold.

Kindle News

2008 is almost at an end and here are some of the most interesting Kindle 2.0, Kindle, and Amazon related news snippets, with my thoughts scattered in between -

1. An exceptional blog post on book sales at Amazon, B&N, Borders, etc. I hadn’t realized how much of a force Barnes & Noble are.
2. Kindle shipping delays are down to 8-10 weeks i.e.  people ordering now should be getting their kindles Feb 13th to Feb 27th. This matches my predicted Kindle 2.0 release date, and I really think mid Feb is when people will get their hands on Kindle 2.0.
3. USA Today is now available on the Kindle and you can get the 26th Dec edition for free.  
4. You can now get used kindles as low as $349 and $400.
5. Is this a growing trend? Brady High School got a $3,500 grant that’ll provide for 5 Kindles and 70 books for students in the Spring Semester.
6. Amazon’s 2008 holiday season was its best ever – Are people coming online for better deals? Or is Amazon simply doing a better job than everyone else?  
7. Kindle Edition sales continue to impress -
   

   Brian Murray, CEO of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide, said in the NYT earlier this week that the Kindle sales of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, one of Winfrey’s book club titles, represent 20 percent of total Amazon sales for the book

8. As do New York Times’ desparation measures -
   

   The Times is planning to sell its 17.5 percent stake in the Boston Red Sox in an effort to create $150-200 million in cash. The company may also sell The Boston Globe and About.com to gain additional breathing room.

9. Going back to the fact that 20% of total sales of ‘Story of Edgar Sawtelle’ were to Kindle owners – What percentage of total book sales do these Kindle editions account for? Is it significant enough for publishers to start marketing to Kindle owners? 
10. Prime View’s stock is soaring in Taiwan – However, there’s a rather strange snippet in there – “Shipments have almost doubled to around 2,500 sets of e-books each month to 4,500 sets as now.” Apart from the obvious grammatical mistakes, isn’t 4,500 sets a month just plain wrong.

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