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By Stephen Windwalker, editor of The Kindle Nation

image When an experienced newsman like The Kindle Chronicles podcaster Len Edgerly  interviews an experienced newsman like Timesman Brad Stone (photo) on a newsy topic like the Kindle, there’s bound to be some news made.

Here are a few things I noticed as I listened to this week’s podcast:

  • It’s not often that you hear unintended interruptions like a ringing phone in the background of one of Len’s interviews, but I couldn’t help but wonder if there may have been some cause and effect unleashed in the interview when Stone implicitly questioned his boss Arthur Ochs Sulzberger’s prudence for taking the stage with Jeff Bezos, perhaps prematurely, at last May’s Amazon corporate press conference to hype the Kindle DX. It took all of 24 seconds before Stone had to apologize to Len for the fact that his phone was ringing in the background. H’mm. Punch Junior on the line? Maybe not, but I’ve been reading The Lost Symbol, so don’t think I don’t know that everything is connected!

  • And speaking of newspapers, Stone mentioned something in passing that seems significant, but which I had not heard before. He said that Amazon originally negotiated two-year Kindle publication deals with major newspapers when the Kindle was launched back in the Fall of 2007. That timetable, combined with new competition from Google’s Fast Flip newspaper app, the unfulfilled promise of the DX press conference, and the various controversies that are swirling around digital access to newspaper content, suggests that we may be looking at some real change involving Kindle periodicals this Fall. Stay tuned.
  • Finally, and speaking of The Lost Symbol, Stone’s comments on the piece by fellow Times staffer Motoko Rich in which she noted our scoop on the supremacy of the Kindle edition of the Dan Brown bestseller seemed curious to say the least. Although Kindle Nation and numerous other commenters were very clear about saying that Kindle copies of The Lost Symbol had outsold Amazon hardcover copies, and only Amazon hardcover copies, Stone went so far as to charge that "this was sort of misleading," and went on to support his point by substantially distorting our statements and embellish the facts as reported by Rich. Rich’s piece quoted "a person familiar with the sales figures," without giving any reason for protecting the source’s anonymity. This person, as quoted by Rich, "said far less than 5 percent were electronic book editions." Speaking of the piece, the avuncular Stone allowed that he had "kind of helped her think through it" and said Rich had quoted Little, Brown — a publisher owned by Hachette Livre and entirely independent of Doubleday and its German ownership (Random House and Bertelsmann) — as saying that the the electronic version is like 5 to 10 per cent of overall book sales. I’m not sure why Little, Brown would be well-informed on Doubleday’s sales, but given that we’re talking here about millions of units sold, of course, there’s a great deal of difference between "10 per cent" and "far less than 5 per cent."

Stone went on to make several unsupported and not brightly illuminating statements about the pre-ordering habits of Kindle owners and hardcover book buyers and seemed utterly mystified by the workings of Amazon’s sales rankings. He dismissed the value of Amazon’s sales ranking system by quoting an Amazon spokesman saying that "the bestsellers list does not reflect total unit sales," but then of course — for anyone who stops to think here — neither does the New York Times bestseller list. Both bestseller lists reflect sales units and velocity over finite recent windows of time rather than cumulative totals. If the New York Times bestseller list reflected total cumulative unit sales, of course, it would still be heavy with titles such as The Bible, Gone with the Wind, and, oh yeah, The Da Vinci Code.

So, what’s Brad Stone up to? Not much of anything, I shouldn’t think. I appreciate the straightforwardness and civility of Motoko Rich’s piece and her direct communication with me, not to mention the fact that she implicitly gave Kindle Nation credit for the scoop. But anyone who has been reading the Gray Lady for several decades, as I have, should not be surprised when the paper’s coverage of the winds of change leads, first and foremost, with protests that the reporter doesn’t even feel a breeze. And Rich’s colleague Brad Stone, though I’m sure he’s a terrific reporter in other situations, brought back that realization with his distortion and imprecision in this case. Although none of his several imprecisions is a big deal, in and of itself, each of them slanted the story away from the truth and toward his underlying agenda, which was to diminish as "misleading" the important story that we reported with 100% accuracy here at Kindle Nation: that the Kindle edition of The Lost Symbol was, and has now been for 10 days, the no. 1 bestseller at the biggest bookstore in the world.

What was that sign that Bob was holding?

Stephen Windwalker is founder of the Kindle Nation Daily blog and author of The Complete User’s Guide to the Amazing Amazon Kindle 2 and the novel Say My Name.

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