From the press release:
“It’s still October and we’ve already sold more Kindle devices since launch than we did during the entire fourth quarter of last year—astonishing because the fourth quarter is the busiest time of year on Amazon,” said Steve Kessel, Senior Vice President, Amazon Kindle. “Readers continue to choose Kindle for its all-new electronic ink screen with 50 percent higher contrast, readability in bright sunlight, long battery life of up to one month, light 8.5 ounce form, flexibility to read their books across all major LCD devices and platforms, and low $139 price. It’s clear that this is going to be the biggest holiday for Kindle yet—by far.”
In addition, Kindle book unit sales continue to overtake print on Amazon.com, even while print book sales continue to grow. During the past 30 days, Amazon.com customers purchased more Kindle books than print books—hardcover and paperback combined—for the top 10, 25, 100, and 1,000 bestselling books on Amazon.com.
“For the top 10 bestselling books on Amazon.com, customers are choosing Kindle books over hardcover and paperback books combined at a rate of greater than 2 to 1. Kindle books are also outselling print books for the top 25, 100, and 1,000 bestsellers—it’s across the board,” said Kessel. “This is remarkable when you consider that we’ve been selling hardcover and paperback books for 15 years, and Kindle books for just 36 months.”
The release also mentions some other interesting figures: Kindles and Kindle-related items make up 15 of the top 15 best selling items on Amazon and Amazon UK; Amazon sold 3 times as many Kindle books in the first nine months of 2010 as in the first nine months of 2009.
Amazon’s claims need to be taken with a pinch of salt. No numbers, just bald claims.
So they sold more Kindles in the last 12 weeks than during the last 12 weeks of 2009? What’s so hot about that? The ebook market *is* growing. No need to tell us that.
The top 1 bestselling book on Amazon is the *free* public domain edition of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes which they snarfed from Project Gutenberg.
Need to say more?
The entire growth of the Internet had no influence on the continuing growth of print book publication. So far the entire growth of the screen book has had no influence on the continuing growth of print book publication.
No… they’ve sold an *unspecified* number more this year than the *unspecified* number they sold last year.
Aren’t they wonderful? Not because they can prove it, but because they say so!
Give me a break. Who writes these whitewashes at Amazon?
Consider the possibility that Amazon is telling the truth. It wrote: “Kindle book unit sales continue to overtake print on Amazon.com, even while print book sales continue to grow. During the past 30 days, Amazon.com customers purchased more Kindle books than print books—hardcover and paperback combined—for the top 10, 25, 100, and 1,000 bestselling books on Amazon.com.”
Ebook unit sales in the past 30 days surpassed hardcover AND paperback unit sales of the top 1000 best-sellers at Amazon. This even at a time when the combined hardcover and paperback unit sales grew for Amazon (presumably vs same period last year).
Note this isn’t PD material: it’s best-sellers. And it means that Amazon is growing vs paper as well as e-book marketshare. There still remains not a single competitor stepping up with 500,000 or 1 million ebook sales of any title or author.