As we see the Kindle 3 sell more and more this number might go even higher and the claims of non-reading devices being more important than eReaders will hopefully die out. Amazon VP Ian Freed today cleared up all the rumors of 99% of Kindle ebook sales being to iPad owners.
Here’s what he had to say, courtesy CNet which was trying its best to be snarky,
80 percent of Kindle books we sell are sold to Kindle owners. They may have a Kindle app on a phone or an iPad or Mac or PC, but they at least have a Kindle.
So 20 percent do not.
That’s stunning.
It totally destroys the anti-reading people’s contention that 80% of reading is done on cellphones and electronic calculators and car GPSes. Hopefully, they stop talking about how much they read on their alarm clock’s LCD panel.
Yes, I did happen to stroll through Lolita on my Alarm Clock yesterday.
There are two rows so it’s perfect for rapid serial visual presentation. It makes the chapters fly by like migratory birds.
I would certainly like to see the Kindle grapple with that. It mystifies the mind to think that people buy that black and white slab of drabness when it doesn’t even have an alarm function – how quaint.
The CNet interviewer had thrown in a ‘What percentage of Kindle sales are on the iPad?’ question the first chance he got. He probably didn’t like the answer he got very much.
But … but … iPad is wonderful and it’s in color and i can touch the words. Oh No, the eReaders are taking over. It’s terrible – we will be trapped in a world without color.
Ian Freed added insult to injury with this little revelation -
We see a lot of customers start with apps and buy a Kindle later.
Guess it’s poetic justice that the Kindle Apps that were supposed to kill the Kindle are increasing its sales. There’s actually more.
Kindle has 80% market share, iPad has 20%, Nook has 20%, and Sony has the remaining 17%
After trying some more ‘tell me that the iPad is killing the Kindle’ snarkiness the CNet gentleman broached the subject of ebook market share.
CNET: Well, Apple’s saying it’s got 20 percent market share and I’ve heard Barnes & Noble saying it’s got 20 percent as well, so that would leave you guys with…
Freed: Honestly, something doesn’t add up because we’re pretty sure we’re 70 to 80 percent of the market … we’ve been very metrics-focused and we don’t typically throw out numbers we don’t firmly believe in.
Way to call a spade a spade.
See, Mr. Interviewer Sir – You missed the part where Steve Jobs pulled a rabbit out of his iPad and its stomach had ’20% of sales for new books from Agency Model Publishers that are available on iPad and bathed in flourescent lighting on the 12th of every month’ printed on it in magic fairy dust that is only visible to those whose phones have Retina Display.
At this point Mr. Interviewer was left clutching at straws -
CNET: A lot of people, including me, have said that you’d prefer not to be in the hardware business. That you just got into it to establish the market and that you’d prefer to sell razor blades–the e-books–rather than the razors.
Freed: I wouldn’t actually say that. We really set up the businesses independently. We fully expect our device business to stand on its own.
Guess that is the logical question to ask after you’ve just been told that Kindle owners account for 80% of Kindle book sales. Let me rephrase it so its utter ridiculousness is apparent -
So Mr. Freed – You’re telling me that 80% of your ebook sales are due to Kindle Owners. Well, then it would make perfect sense to stop selling Kindles and focus on the other 20%. Do you plan on doing that?
You wish you could read people’s real thoughts. That people would be candid with everyone and could really say what they wanted to say. It would have been awesome to hear what Ian Freed really wanted to say in response to the CNet gentleman’s brain-dead question.
80% of Kindle Books sold to Kindle owners
The apocalypse is upon us.
It’s a frightful time to be a Publisher. In the last two weeks we have had -
- Andrew Wylie sign a Kindle exclusive contract.
- Mr. Jeff Bezos announce that Amazon is selling more ebooks than hardcovers.
- Kindle 3 come out and sell-out.
- Ian Freed announce that 80% of ebook sales are to Kindle owners.
You’d have to find an absolutely enormous rock to climb under to pretend the end of Publishers isn’t near.
It’s also a frightful time to be a CNet interviewer type Kindle-hater - Kindle 3 is a hit, Kindle WiFi is $139 (which means you can get 3.5 Kindle WiFis for the price of an iPad WiFi), and apparently Kindle owners are the ones buying ebooks and not our dear iPad owners.
It’s going to be delicious to see the Kindle 3 and the $139 Kindle WiFi continue to do well and people like this CNet gentleman twist and turn and have their heads spontaneously combust at the thought that more and more people are buying eReaders and reading books.
Filed under: kindle Tagged: | ebook sales trends, kindle future
My books haven’t been in color since about 4th grade, why would I need them to be just because they have an eVersion?
These iPad lovers are crazy! iPads are for media lovers and Apple worshipers, not for readers.
Frankly, I don’t get the iPad thing in general. Who would want a device that is the same size as a netbook but doesn’t multitask and has to have a separate keyboard yet costs at least twice as much? All I hear is about how great the images are. Well, an LCD screen is an LCD screen, they look good on my phone too, when you’re not in strong light or sunlight, or glare from windows.
“These iPad lovers are crazy!”
It sure looks that way, doesn’t it? However after reflecting about this phenomenon a lot I’ve come to the conclusion there’s more to this than meets the eye. Let’s try an example. Take a look at (you too Abhi if you will, it’s well worth it IMO) this blog post, referenced at Teleread:
http://tinyurl.com/2wcpl2c
The author is a PhD student in England, very smart and well educated. This blog post per se is wonderfully written and a pleasure to read. But let’s try and analyze what he’s actually saying there. Basically he says he’s been coveting iPad for a long time. Then he acknowledges that Kindle is much less expensive (3.5 times to be exact) but then in a bizarre twist tries to argue that Kindle’s $139 is actually still too much for such a device and even saying half of that amount (about 50 British pounds) would still be a lot for “visually ergonomic, super battery life and free 3G” (!). On the other hand, he argues that the iPad, although priced over 3 times higher, is actually a much batter value for money because it is “covering near all of your book, video, radio, music, picture, and internet needs”.
To make matters more interesting, in the very beginning of the article he explains that both he and his girlfriend are student scientists who live on a very tight budget (consequently possessing no extra devices other than their PCs but coveting an iPad). So, in a nutshell, a $139 device is too expensive for them (and would be even if it were priced at half of that amount) but a $499 eventually isn’t – they are kind of saving money for it or at least want to – because it does so much more.
The most of their professional computing activity, as I understood it, revolves around accessing large amounts of scientific data, mainly PDFs and online resources. I suppose they need to produce some data as well since are students. In my opinion, strictly speaking, they need neither Kindle nor iPad since the only kind of device that is tailored well for such an extensive multiple source cross referencing work is a desktop PC or a laptop (large screen, multiple documents, extensive copy/pasting and of course lots of writing with the obvious need of transferring data to and from external memory devices). And those they do own already.
Ok, so coming to the main point now – why do they covet the iPad (which they don’t really need) and try to rationalize away a much cheaper device almost as if feeling guilty of indulging their “iPad-lust” as the author put it)? In my opinion the reason is the iPad, as well as the iPhone and iPod are essentially marvelous, shiny (overpriced) toys with a practical purpose on top and a status symbol as a fringe benefit, the high price only boosting these effects. However, deep down they are and being advertised as near magical toys with awesome games on them and lots of pictures and videos, being able to touch them and holding them in your hand, taking them everywhere with you, perhaps making your friends a bit jealous too. The funny thing is most of these “features” are as readily applicable to my kid’s Yu-Gi-Oh or Ben10 sets as they are to most of Apple’s latest products, overpricing included.
The attraction/affinity for those is never rational but always emotional. Being a parent myself it’s quite obvious. Most Kindle users, on the other hand, buy these devices the same way we buy our laptops, external hard drives, dental plans etc. We’re buying tools or services that help meet our needs of reading, computing, keeping our teeth healthy and so on. In other words, they are MEANS to fulfill our needs, not the need itself. Toys, however, are always an end in itself, being motivated by some innate hardwired human urge that is beyond the scope of this post.
In essence we either buy a tool to enable us to do something we like, or a gadget we like to be able to play with it. I’m no stranger to both kinds of buying as I’ve bought my Kindle 2 as a mixture of both worlds. Firstly to be able to read on the go and accessing free internet internationally and, secondly, because Kindles are a spitting image of one of the tools that scientific visionary Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek characters have been using for decades (http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/PADD) and I am sort of a fan.
All said I think it’s perfectly fine to buy oneself toys if possible and desired, especially if not too unhealthy or damaging to our neighbors. However I think that selling glorified and overpriced toys using marketing strategies of the entertainment industry and advertising them as the ultimate technological tools is both misleading and deplorable by any company that does it consciously and systematically.
wow – that’s perhaps the best explanation I’ve read of the iFever.
This article deserves to be framed it’s so funny.
What I’m wondering now is: With the publishing industry heading towards ebook domination (and more than likely Kindle domination at that) how can an aspiring fiction writer capitalize on the oncoming change? …or is there really any way to do that? In another post you talked about how only the top 3% of authors will be able to really feel the benefits of the new system–is it then futile for an unheard-of to even try? Or by “reap the benefits” do you mean make millions? If so, then I guess it’s really not all that different from the old system. Except, maybe, that books as wretchedly written as Twilight will find it much harder to succeed. … … … Yeah.
Uriah,
There will still be lots of ways to make it big. It’s still relative so the authors who understand the new landscape better and create properties will win.
You’re competing with authors on quality of writing AND on how well you tailor your marketing etc. to the new landscape.
You might have to do a combination of 5-6 things –
Get into Amazon Encore by getting a lot of good reviews.
Become part of the community at the offical kindle forum and help new kindle owners.
Start a blog called Kindle Fiction and write on it once a day. Help either other authors or help Kindle owners find interesting new books. Google ”Spalding’s Racket” for one example.
Talk to all the main kindle blog etc. owners (Len, Stephen, Andrys, etc.) and get featured on one or more of them.
I do mean make millions. However, it’ll be much easier to fix yourself in a top position (by doing 90% of the things needed) than to try to hit a ‘comfortable’ position.
Don’t quite know how to explain it – it’s much easier to be in the top 3% in any profession than to be in the next 10-15%. You have to be working very hard for either. However, to miss the top 3% and hit the net rung you have to be repeating some mistakes.
You also have to try a lot of different mediums to meet customers (good reads, kindle forums, kindle blogs, facebook, twitter) because you never know which your niche is and which you’re suited for.
While doing all of this you also have to write and specialize in writing. So, basically it’s about slowing down time.
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