So I read in the news that Amazon is selling more Kindle books than hardcover and paperback books combined. I'm not buying this. The company says it sells 105 ebooks for every 100 printed books sold.
Now obviously, this includes Kindle books that are read on non-Kindle readers, such as the iPad and other devices that have Kindle software. Either that or a lot more people have Kindles than I previously thought. Of all the people I know, only two have Kindles. I never see them on airplanes, and I check every time I fly. The last time I saw an ebook reader on a plane it was a Sony reader.
I do not deny that the trend towards ebooks is powerful and increasing, but Bezos himself said it was surprising that the crossover point has taken place so soon. I mean ebook just surpassed the hardcover numbers, so it's hard to believe they've now surpassed ALL printed books.
So, I want to see the numbers.
This all looks like a publicity stunt if you ask me. The numbers should have been released since this is a major shift in societal trends.It would affect the reading public, printing companies, book publishers, Amazon competitors, corner bookstores, public libraries, and schools. If it's true, everything will change. But where are the numbers?
So I do not believe this. The books have been cooked.
Is Amazon counting the "used" books it sells or not? Many of the so-called used titles are actually new remainders and not used at all. Are they not counted? Is a 10-page Kindle book counted as a book or not?
We do not know, and nobody is talking. This is one of the reasons why I'm dubious.
I can understand Amazon wanting to keep numbers to itself, but can a third party chime in with smart and close estimates? No, we get nothing.
Now it is an observable fact that Kindle and tablet owners buy an inordinate number of books that they never read. This is because it's humiliating to show someone your iPad or Kindle if you have a paucity of books, say, 10. People think you must be dumb if you have so few books on your device. So everyone with one of these things immediately buys a bunch of trendy books and puts them on the reader. Having 50-100 books is typical. At $10 a pop or less, this is a good investment in image-making. "Look at me, I'm smart!"
In the olden days, you'd have to bring someone to your home to show how smart you were with your book collection. Now the message is portable. By the way, clicking on the ebook reader on someone's iPad is the first thing many people do.
Another thing that encourages ebook sales is the old, print book model. When a hot book came out and you wanted to buy it for later reading, you'd get it while it was hot, so you'd have it right away. This phenomenon holds true for the Kindle books too. With an ebook reader, if you want to read a book, you can literally wait as long as you want; the book will always be there ready for download. But no, people download ASAP. The book then sits on the device forgotten.
So the ebook has a lot going for it in terms of sales, but the sheer number of printed books sold in the U.S. alone amounted to over $40 billion (net) in the days before the Kindle. (This number is arguable.) Unit sales were said to be over 3 billion books. In the U.S., Amazon has a huge piece of the action, and to claim that most of the sales (in volume not revenue) are ebooks is hard to imagine.
Ebooks are great. They offer niche publishing a huge opportunity. But if Amazon is selling more ebooks than print books and if I were a big brand publisher, I'd be jumping out of a window right now. I do not see that happening either.
Show me the numbers!
More John C. Dvorak:
‧?? I'm Skeptical of the Amazon Ebook Ratio
‧?? Rethinking the Microsoft Skype Buyout
‧?? Big Brother is Watching (What) You (Eat)
‧?? The Cloud: Risky, Unreliable, and Dumb
‧?? Google-gate: I'm Defending Facebook
‧? more
Go off-topic with John C. Dvorak.
No comments:
Post a Comment