C. Max Magee is posting about how now 1 out of 6 items sold to readers who go to amazon via his site are Kindle Edition books.
Before the launch of the Kindle 2, he says -
Kindle ebooks sales from November 19, 2007, to February 21, 2009, the day before the Kindle 2 started shipping, amounted to one out every 99 items purchased at Amazon after reaching it from The Millions.
And now (post Kindle 2) it’s 1 out of 6 items. Not 1 out of 6 books, 1 out of 6 items.
At one of the Amazon forums, he mentions that a quarter to half of book sales at Amazon could be kindle edition sales by sometime next year.
Kindle Edition Books becoming 25%-50% of all sales is not as far fetched as you might imagine.
Although this sounds completely unbelievable, its not as far fetched as you might imagine -
- Almost everyone who has actually used a Kindle 2 or Kindle has loved it.
- Kindle owners buy 2.7 times as many books as they used to.
- This blog is about nothing except the Kindle and its grown 20 times from a year ago. Surely, that must be in some part due to the explosion of popularity of the Kindle.
When Mr. Bezos said that 10% of books sold are Kindle Edition books, perhaps he didn’t slip up. Perhaps he really did mean 10% of total book sales.
Could Amazon really be selling 10% of books as Kindle Edition Books?
Case 1: Most Probable Scenario.
Amazon sold 500K Kindles through end 2008 and now has a total of 700K Kindles and Kindle 2s out on the market. You can check my Kindle 2 Sales Estimates post for predictions for 2009.
Assumptions:
- Amazon.com gets 55 million unique visitors a month (Qunatcast: 43 million, Compete: 65 million).
- Before Kindle, let’s assume 30% bought books from Amazon, at a rate of x per month. We’ll assume x is 1 for convenience sake. So 16.5 million people buying a book a month.
- People who buy Kindles tend to buy more books than non Kindle owners – even BEFORE owning a Kindle. This sounds right.
- Mr. Bezos is right about Kindle owners buying 2.7 times more books.
- The ‘Kindles in same family, same owner’ factor balances out because Kindle owners bought more books (even before owning a kindle) than non-owners.
- For simplicity let’s say that Kindle owners tend to not buy any more physical books from Amazon (which is probably very close to the truth).
So taking all these assumptions into account –
- That means, out of the 16.5 million customers who buy books, 700K now own Kindle 1 or 2, and buy 2.7 times more books.
- Books Sold: 15.8 million * 1 book a month = 15.8 million books a month.
- Kindle Edition Books Sold: .7 million Kindle Owners * 2.7 = 1.89 million books a month.
Yes! In the most probable case, 10.7% of books sold are sold as Kindle Edition books.
Case 2: Wildly Optimistic Scenario
Amazon sold 1 million Kindles through end 2008, and another 300K this year in January, February, and March.
Taking the same assumptions on buying rate and nature of Kindle owners, and number of people buying books from Amazon.com, we get -
- Out of 16.5 million customers who buy books at Amazon, 1.3 million now own Kindle 1 or 2, and buy 2.7 times more books.
- Books Sold: 15.2 million * 1 book a month = 15.2 million books a month.
- Kindle Edition Books Sold: 1.3 million Kindle owners * 2.7 = 3.51 million books a month.
In the most optimistic scenario, 18.8% of all book sales at Amazon are already Kindle Edition Book Sales.
If Kindle 3 is a hit in the Holiday Season of 2009, what would that mean?
Let’s say that it’s a big hit and we get to, say 2 million Kindle , Kindle 2 and Kindle 3 owners. In this case we’re doing a super simple analysis so it’s over simplified and hardly accurate – However, it gives us a figure to talk about.
That would translate to -
- Out of 16.5 million customers who buy books at Amazon, 2 million are, by end 2009, Kindle owners. Note: This is a huge oversimplification.
- Books Sold: 14 million * 1 book a month = 14 million books a month (say Dec 2009).
- Kindle Edition Books Sold: 2 million * 2.7 = 5.4 million books a month (Dec 2009).
That translates to 27.83% of the book sales at Amazon being Kindle Edition books by end 2009.
Mr. Magee is right – except he hasn’t accounted for the possibility that Amazon might be selling 25% of their books as kindle edition books by end of 2009 itself. Perhaps its time to consider buying and/or writing for the Kindle 2.
Filed under: evolution Tagged: | kindle sales estimates
I don’t doubt that 10% of their book sales are now on Kindle. They also did something else in February – they quit paying their affiliates for any Kindle book sales referrals (although they showed referral fees thru March, the first week in April all those fees vanished, back to Feb 1). So many web sites, blogs and forums that were using that income to pay for give-aways and hosting fees will find that they have taken a significant drop in income. Those who were funding the sites out of their own pockets may slowly disappear (and many affiliates that discussed books and other things have started promoting only paper book versions and looking at linking to other companies’ sites instead).
Those are some interesting numbers … especially your growth over the last year. I mean, there are just so many questions and implications, that I can see how a blog devoted to the subject full time can thrive.
As a matter of fact, I am attempting to conduct a small research survey on Kindle users as we speak. I’m trying to gauge who is using the Kindle as a way to determine its future as a device. It’s open for anyone to take at my website (sorry, I don’t mean to “spam” your comments. But I really do think it is something you and your readers may be interested in).