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Kindle edition of The Lost Symbol outselling Amazon hardcovers!
September 15, 2009 | 10:26 am
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By Paul Biba
At least for now – 10:30 am EDT, September 15. That’s what Stephen Windwalker just discovered and posted on his Kindle Nation Daily. You can see how Stephen discovered this, as the figures are not apparent from the overall book sales rankings, by checking out his site. As he says:
It could all change within an hour or two. But if this trend continues it will have tremendous influence over the way authors and publishers see the Kindle. There will be plenty of questions about whether and how much each of the players — Amazon, Random House, and Dan Brown — are actually profiting on each Kindle download. And, given my accompanying prediction that “as many as half of the Kindle edition downloads of The Lost Symbol will deliver it to the iPhone or iPod Touch, based on the free Kindle App featured in No Kindle Required,” it will pull back the curtain on how important the iPhone and iPod Touch are, and will continue to be, to sales in the Kindle Store.
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Comments:
If the Kindle version of ‘The Lost Symbol’ outsells hardcovers, I think it will be a game-changer for ebooks overall. This book has been so widely publicized and advertised, having the digital version outsell the print will really shoot ebooks into the mainstream like we’ve never seen before.
I’ll be watching this closely to see how the Kindle does. For once I’m actually rooting for the Kindle because this can have huge implications for all ebooks.
BTW, I bought a hardcover edition of The Last Symbol today. I hope it’s good!
At 1:00 PM EST paper has the lead at Amazon.
I’d have gotten the Kindle edition except for the fact that my kids gave me a gift card to a book store on the east coast so I used it for this. Either way though this is really good news!
So, what happened is the early acquirers picked up the Kindle version before the physical stores opened, and once the stores opened, the print consumers outbought them.
Considering a large number of book buyers work day jobs, and won’t get the chance to go to the store first thing in the day, it seems Kindle sales are still but a dent in early sales if they were overtaken so quickly.
Still, Kindle sales could turn out to be highly significant in the long run. The fact that they started out so strongly should make the industry take notice regardless of final figures.
This is big news. It probably speaks as much about the almost instantaneous nature of the pipeline as the absolute volume of sales, though. Pre-ordering pushed the dtb version up the ranks but not so for the Kindle edition. Missing such a pressure release valve, pent-up demand for the eBook was assured. Added to that, impulse-purchase would have been strong after the marketing splash of today’s release.
How long will it last? I am not downplaying the significance of the observation, just trying to drill down to get to the root of it. I agree with Brad and hope that it gives eBooks in general a push.
Steve – slight correction to your thought: this is only about paper and ebook sales on the Amazon platform. It has nothing to do with sales in physical stores, opening times, early adopters etc. I too am rooting for a boost to the ebook market!
interesting to see how very different the mix is for Kindle vs physical books in the various categories.
As Aaron pointed out, the comparison here is only between Kindle sales by Amazon and hardcover sales by Amazon, but I would agree with Brad and Paul that this has the potential to have serious influence on the ways in which authors and publishers see ebooks. And, for the record, as of 9 pm EDT the ebook version of The Lost Symbol is back on top, ahead of the paper version and, of course, everything else at Amazon.
Here’s a link to Amazon’s FAQ page about their Sales Ranking information:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=525376
And here’s an (albeit somewhat old) article about Amazon’s sales ranking: http://www.webpronews.com/expertarticles/2006/06/15/navigating-the-amazon-sales-ranking
Basically, it’s a proprietary ranking that does not necessarily reflect actual sales. Personally, I wouldn’t take the ordering of these two versions as an accurate account of their true selling rates. **Tinfoil hat on** I would also not put it past Amazon to manipulate this sales ranking data to push the Kindle version, as one of the authors of this blog knows too well. **Tinfoil hat off**
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