More on TechnologyTell: Gadget News | Apple News
E-book popularity surge, as shown by Amazon’s 11-to-13-week back orders: Oprah Effect?
November 28, 2008 | 4:40 pm
|
By David Rothman
The Oprah Effect works not just for p-books but also for e-book devices, at least if you go by the 11-13 week delays for Kindle shoppers. Say good-bye to next-day delivery.
Will Amazon stop taking orders for the current Kindle and switch to the Kindle 2? ArsTechnica has the details; also see a Techmeme roundup. Ars Technica’s main point is that e-books as a whole are enjoying a popularity surge, and that publishers such as Random House are responding.
Close to home: At Thanksgiving dinner last night in Fairfax Station, VA, one of my nieces for the first time talked about buying a Kindle, saying it looked “cool,” and that Oprah was a factor.
The iPhone question: Will some disappointed Amazon shoppers instead use iPhones or iPod Touches instead to read books? in some cases, definitely. Part of Stanza‘s growth might be from many shoppers’ discovery that they already own e-book devices, in effect. But it’s a case-by-case matter. I know my niece has written off the iPhone screen as too small. I just wish she’d try out my Touch, with an LCD the same size. Image shows Stanza 1.6′s new browser in action.
Related: E-books have a future in inTunes., from Wired network blogger Chris Synder.
Technorati Tags: Oprah Winfrey
|
Previous
SUBSCRIBE TO RSS
Comments:
Ars says “the long-rumored Kindle 2.0 is still… well, rumored.”
It hasn’t been announced yet, in fact Amazon denies it exists.
Thanks, JM, but it’s rather unlikely that Amazon would not follow up the successful Kindle with the Kindle 2, and beyond that I find the prototype in the picture to be in character for Amazon.
Also, let’s remember the Osborne effect. Amazon may well have lied to preserve sales of the original Kindle, which would suffer if people knew about a forthcoming model—the very thing that happened when mere news of the forthcoming Osborne 2 sank the Osborne 1.
As for the Kindle 2 not making its appearance this year, as TechCrunch predicted some months ago, well, it can’t prevent Amazon from changing its mind.
Bottom line: I find TechCrunch’s current report to be more credible than Ars’s writeup even though I think highly of the latter site. Feel welcome to continue to disagree with me on this one.
Thanks,
David
I don’t doubt at all that Bezos/Amazon has plans for a follow up.
I doubt that the rumour mongering on this site is useful. It may even be accurate, perhaps, but at this point all you are doing is repeating internet rumours.
Hardly a fine example of original reportage, or the vaunted Teleread “accuracy, accuracy, accuracy”.
There are plenty of gadget sites on the ‘net that do a good job of gadget reporting but we expect more from Teleread, not more of the same.
Not version 2 (which is so far, only an officially denied rumour from one web site), but your niece could still get a refurbished Kindle in time for this Christmas, direct from Amazon, with the full warranty:
http://www.tinyurl.com/RefurbKindle
Amazon are showing amazing incompetence at marketing their own product (they will be unable to sell any Kindles to willing customers for 3 months – and over the holiday season when people want to get into reading! And not for the first time.)
They really don’t seem to have any definite plan for this product, they are just making it up as they go. It shows in the original design, (look for Philippe Starck’s critique of the Kindle design) and it shows in comments like Jeff Bezos’ recent: “Perhaps we’ll create better user interface…”. Perhaps, if we feel like it. Instead of that reply, he should have been soliciting more feedback from what seems to be a legitimate user complaint. I didn’t get a feeling from the somewhat appalling SmartMoney interview that he was withholding information deliberately, just that they really do not know what they are doing.
If Amazon had a proper plan in place, they’d know exactly when to refresh the product, and whether there is a 2.0 coming or not, any such plan would not tolerate a 3 month hiatus in sales.
Anyway, the interesting link in the article above was about ebooks having a future on iTunes. Maybe, but do these publishers really think that if this takes off, Apple aren’t going to want to re-negotiate the method by which sales are managed (ie, they’ll move them into iTunes itself) and the percentage that Apple is going to get from each sale?
We’re talking about items of similar or higher value than movie sales here – I doubt that if there is any significant volume, that Jobs will let things continue as they are.