Used Books Blog

Citigroup Analyst Mark Mahaney predicts that Amazon will generate between $400 million and $750 million in Kindle revenue by 2010 based on a to-date Kindle sales estimate of between 10,000 and 30,000. TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington does a nice job taking the Mahaney report and extracting the relevant points. In particular, the issue is the slim amount of public data on the Kindle. The $64,000 question … er … $400 million dollar question is just how many Kindles have been sold.

Here’s how Mahaney arrives at the 10,000 to 30,000 range.

How Is Kindle Doing So Far In The Marketplace?

Our ability to answer this question is very limited. Amazon is the sole retailer of the Kindle and it has disclosed no information about its sales other than to say that it sold out in the first 5 1⁄2 hours. But we have pieced together four different clues to gain a sense of Kindle’s traction.

First, we note that Kindle has consistently been ranked among Amazon’s Bestsellers in its Electronics category. Ahead of the Apple iPod Nano, the Garmin GPS Navigator, and the Canon Powershot Digital Camera.

Second, we note that the Kindle has received a very large number of customer reviews. Per the exhibit below, we note that Kindle has received more customer reviews than any of the other Top 10 Bestselling items in Amazon’s Electronics category – 2,537 reviews as of May 12th – vs. 663 for the Apple iPod Nano 4 GB Silver (3G), the #2 Bestseller. This is in part an unfair comparison. Kindle is a new product sold only on Amazon.com, while there are numerous versions of the iPod, and they are sold by numerous retailers. But still, the volume of reviews does indicate material traction for the Kindle.

Third, we see that the quality/tone of the customer reviews the Kindle is receiving is relatively positive. Below we compare the Star Rating Diffusion – 5 Stars vs. 4 Stars vs. 3 Stars etc… – for each of the Top 10 Bestselling Electronics Items on Amazon. What we see is that the Kindle actually receives fewer high scores than the other Bestsellers – 69% of its reviews are 4 or 5 Stars vs. an average of 80% for the other items. And it receives more low scores than the other Bestsellers – 22% of its reviews are 1 or 2 Stars vs. an average of 13% for the other Items. But for a Version 1 of a product “competing” against a several times iterated leading consumer electronics item like the iPod, a 69% Star 4 or 5 rating is relatively positive.

And fourth, we note that the most reviewed Customer Review of Kindle (“Why and how the Kindle changes everything” by Steve “eBook Lover” Gibson) has been reviewed by at least 27,000 people. Specifically, as of May 13th, 26,931 have read Steve Gibson’s review and actually commented on it by pressing the Yes or No button when asked if the review was helpful. And logically, there would be more people who read the review and didn’t bother to vote, although the voting step is hyper-easy. We believe that this helps provide something of a proxy for how many Kindles have likely been sold. We’d peg the number as somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000 Kindles sold to date.

I’m glad Mahaney speaks to the fact that the Kindle is only sold at Amazon which would boost it’s standing for both bestsellers and customer reviews. However, using the review rating number as a proxy for Kindle sales seems shaky. It is hyper-easy and there’s a lot of vitriol around Amazon, eBooks, DRM that could encourage this type of ‘monkey click’ behavior. I’m not saying Mahaney is wrong because he’s very smart and is most often correct. I just don’t think this is as much an indicator given the buzz and inherent troll behavior on the Internet.

The model Mahaney uses is based on the iPod adoption curve, but using a smaller base and discounted substantially. Clearly, any type of adoption even half as successful as the iPod would be a massive success. The problem (for me) is that I view the iPod and Kindle as very different, and am concerned that the initial rush of sales was far more indicative of a gadget obsessed innovator segment and not representative of how it would translate to the other stages of the innovation adoption curve.

You can read the details of my argument against large Kindle adoption, but in general I simply don’t think reading has nearly as large a market as music; reading is active rather than passive; the portability issue isn’t nearly as troublesome; and the reading market is, in general, less inclined to adopt these new technologies based on an aging demographic.

The one place I can see large adoption would be within the textbook market. Not only would Kindle Textbooks be a boon to Amazon and students, it would groom a whole new generation on the medium in which they read books.

When do you read? Seriously, with all the things competing for my time I often find it difficult to sit down and read, hence the recent brownout in this blog. Sure, I could have posted some other small bits of news or observation but I still feel that the main reason why you’d read the Used Books Blog is for the book reviews. And I’m a big proponent of quality over quantity, so I’m not going to just go back in time and write paragraph reviews of the hundreds (thousands?) of books I’ve read in the course of my life.

The main reason I have less time now is that I’m no longer commuting by BART (SF train/subway system) into the city a couple of times a week. The half hour ride each way meant I could get in two to three extra hours of reading each week without breaking a proverbial sweat. Don’t fret, I’m not out of work, just working from home a lot more than usual. That leaves me reading before I go to bed and … sadly, I’m just not reading anything that has kept me awake longer than 10 pages a night.

This current brownout also occurred because I started and didn’t finish two books - VALIS by Philip K. Dick and Preston Falls by David Gates. The former was going to be a Retro Review, timed with it’s prominent appearance on the television show Lost.

I’ve read VALIS once in college for a Science Fiction course. (Yeah, it sounds cool but wasn’t as much as you’d think.) I began re-reading it for the review and again found it … interesting but maddening (no pun intended) at the same time. I don’t care what other Philip K. Dick fans says, this isn’t his best work. I will review VALIS in the near future.

Preston Falls on the other hand just never really grabbed me and I had problems connecting with the main character, a New York City Ad Man in mid-life crisis getting drunk and shooting things in upstate New York. I rarely put books down, and I hope I return to Preston Falls but my bookshelf is full of other interesting material.

But I digress.

When do you read? Turns out there’s not a tremendous amount of information on this topic but I did manage to dig up the following statistics from the National Literacy Trust in the UK.

• A survey of 1,000 people for Bedtime Reading Week 2002 found the most popular place to read was in bed (65% of the sample). 25% relax with a book in the bath, 10% take a book to the loo (mainly men), almost half like to read on holiday and a third read on the journey to work. Over a third of those interviewed said they wish they had more time to read.

• An online survey of 1,432 workers, by the TUC for Quick Reads and World Book Day 2006, found that … 55.3% find the time to read for leisure during their lunch breaks. But it is a lack of time for 62.1% that stops them from reading more.

There’s a lot to digest in those stats (like whether waterproof books might increase reading) but at the end of the day it seems that time is our enemy, something all of us seem to have less of despite technological advances. Perhaps it’s the active nature of reading, versus passive nature of TV, Film and Music, that makes reading a bit daunting for even die-hard readers.

So when do you read?

Foop! by Chris Genoa is an appealing science-fiction farce with healthy doses of amusing social commentary. I liked Foop! but wanted to like it more. All the ingredients were there, and it did taste good, but I couldn’t help but think that a dash more of this and a little less of that would have really made it a great read.

The story follows a rather overwhelmed and juvenile Joe, a time travel tour guide. We join Joe in crisis, having to step in for John Wilkes Booth and assassinate Abraham Lincoln. (I can’t help but think of Sarah Vowell right out of the gate and have to believe she’s read Foop!) It’s in these first few chapters that we’re introduced to how time travel works in Foop! and the ’shaved cat’ principle that ensures that any changes made in the past do not effect the future. Or do they?

The story pinballs, nay, ricochets from character to character and wacky, odd-ball scene to the next. There’s Joe’s macho yet tender boss Burk; Martini, an Eeyore-like needy co-worker; Ba Hubba Tree Bob, a new age religious leader; and Boogedy and Nibbles, a mute alien Laurel and Hardy team that stalk Joe throughout time. Genoa stitches these scenes together artfully, particularly since the plot isn’t exactly the cohesive force it could be in the novel.

The vaudeville like tone to Foop! is enjoyable and you can feel a Christopher Moore vibe going on. And perhaps it’s because Moore is so accomplished, or that Tim Scott was successful in doing something similar, that makes me want more from Foop! It’s like early Neal Stephenson, he knew how to start, but had problems really closing the deal. Because there are some deeper messages buried in Foop!, about how we live, about being connected to those around us, and about the general conduct of humans.

But there was too much of the crude Judd Apatow (Superbad, 40 Year Old Virgin) humor steeped in genitalia and bodily orifice jokes. Once in a while and it can be humorous. Frequent use makes me feel like I’m listening to a 14 year-old trying (and failing) to have adult conversation. In addition, the main character seemed a bit uneven, oscillating from spineless stunted geek to acerbic dominant bully.

So, at the end of the day I liked Foop! but hope that, like many first time authors, Chris Genoa turns out an even better sophomore effort.

Yesterday I received an email from AbeBooks which stated that I could save 48% on Stephan King’s Duma Key.

Stephan King? It seems that Abe’s ‘Passion for Books’ doesn’t extend to proofreading. Maybe I’m being overly critical but this is a company in the business of words, books and literature! You’d think that they’d go to greater lengths to ensure these types of errors didn’t occur. What would happen if TechCrunch had a headline that read ‘Steve Jubs predicts iPod success’?

I’d give AbeBooks a mulligan but they used that up a few years ago when they sent a message to their booksellers and accidentally referred to them as boobsellers. A very different business for sure.

Perhaps the AbeBooks tagline should be ‘Passion for ARCs‘ which notoriously have these types of errors. Or is my criticism too harsh?

As recently reported, Borders book stores may be for sale after securing $42.5 million in financing to continue operations. However, the terms of the financing (12.5%!) may make it unappealing to prospective suitors. I’m not saying I could get $42.5 million, but 12.5% interest seems excessive in this setting, even amid the credit crisis.

So what’s going on at Borders and what does this really mean? As someone who lived and breathed this industry for three years I think this is, in some ways, a positive sign. However, it might be too little, too late. So how did we get here?

Borders had an astounding lack of vision, strategy and execution. They rested on their laurels and didn’t see the train rumbling down the track at high speed, high beams on and whistle shrieking.

I remember walking into Borders for the first time (longer ago than I’d like to admit) and being overwhelmed. It was big and it had books and music. That’s right, there was a time when Borders was a cut above Barnes and Noble, when you sought out the Borders location nearest you. It was cool and cutting edge. You wanted to buy books there.

Not so today.

Barnes and Noble responded with bigger stores, added music and partnered with powerhouse Starbucks for their cafe implementation. They made their stores inviting and implemented programs (author readings, expanded children’s sections) that would encourage people to stay longer. Their strategy is simple. The longer you’re in the store, the better chance you’re buying something. Trust me, as a new parent, the children’s section and train table in particular is a massive draw. And yes, I spend plenty on impulse purchases.

Barnes and Noble evolved and surpassed Borders in the offline market. At the same time, mass market retailers like Target, Wal-Mart and Costco began selling books and ate into the traditional bookstore market. And then there was this little thing called the Internet and the rise of Amazon.

Barnes and Noble may have been slow to fully realize their position on the web, but they understood the need to be a stand-alone entity. Borders on the other hand decided to ‘partner’ with Amazon. I don’t know the details of the arrangement but Amazon made out like a bandit and Borders was slow to realize they were getting massacred online. Amazon essentially swallowed the Borders brand online. (In some ways it would make more sense to put an Amazon.com logo on all the Borders stores.)

Our business development team at Alibris was often flummoxed by the lack of clarity at Borders and the glacial speed of their decision making process. Visits to the Ann Arbor offices were gloomy and depressing because of the inertia and vise-like grip on status quo displayed. Yet, there were signs of life, of rebirth. New blood with new ideas fighting to turn the company around.

The decision to sever their relationship with Amazon and build their own ecommerce destination was a turning point and the right move - just 8+ years late. They’re also launching a new concept store in the hopes of, once again, leap-frogging Barnes and Noble.

The financing comes from a hedge fund who also happens to be the largest stakeholder in Borders. Off the cuff, it seems a backhanded vote of confidence in the new direction. At a minimum they want to see the impact of a new website and the new concept stores. They want to see if Borders can catch up, though admittedly in the stiff headwind of a rocky industry and economic climate.

Last call! It’s time for Borders to put up, or be shut down.

Syrup by Maxx Barry is as good as an icy cold Coca Cola on a sweltering hot summer day. In other words, Syrup is satisfying! It’s a fun romp that takes well deserved swipes at marketing, Hollywood, ambition and corporate ethics. Amid the social commentary is a romantic plot that, while a bit one-dimensional, is … well … fun. It’s not the romantic swoon you’ll get from Audrey Niffenegger’s Time Traveler’s Wife, but more like … Sawyer and Kate’s relationship on Lost. Yes, it’s a TV reference, but it’s apt in my opinion, particularly given the role books are playing in that series.

Syrup follows Scat (formerly Michael George Holloway), a recent college graduate, who seeks to become famous. Really famous. Acknowledging his lack of acting ability he seeks to make fame and fortune in business and marketing. The premise is that everyone has at least three big ideas in their lifetime. Three ideas that, if pursued, can make millions of dollars. And it just so happens that Scat has one of these amazing ideas about a new brand of cola named Fukk.

Scat’s idea brings him into contact with 6, a beautiful, young, driven marketer at Coca Cola. No, that’s not a typo, her name is the number 6 and the back story to this unusual name is one of the more intriguing gems in Syrup. Barry doesn’t follow this thread, but I wish he had. Scat is immediately smitten and immersed into the shark tank of corporate politics and ladder back-stabbing. Fukk is a success but doesn’t make Scat millions. In fact, it creates an arch-nemesis, Sneaky Pete, who Scat and 6 fight together through the rest of the novel.

Syrup is composed of very short micro-chapters much like Steve Erickson’s Zeroville. This format lets Barry be creative and playful. You can feel his energy and passion for the story. He’s having fun and thereby, the reader is as well. The format also lets Barry sprinkle in bite size case studies like the following:

Pick a random chemical in your product and heavily promote its presence. When your customers see “Now wth Benzoethylhydrates!” they will assume that this is a good thing.

This is a tongue in cheek send-up which flirts with deeper issues like the difference between perception and reality, the friction between art and commerce and finding yourself. But Barry never delves into any of these areas in greater depth. They’re nearly offhanded comments or topic sentences to a potentially longer essay. Could he have done more? Maybe. Would it have worked? Maybe. Is it necessary to make this novel complete? No!

Syrup by Maxx Barry is fast paced and funny, a marriage of soap opera and satire that is a pleasure to read.

Outrageous Fortune by Tim Scott is a rare blend of action, humor, absurdity, science-fiction and personal insight. You know things are going to be interesting when the first word of Outrageous Fortune is ‘Fuckers’, uttered by main character, Johnny X67. He has every right to be pissed. His house has just been stolen. But that’s not even in the Top 10 of strange things that Johnny encounters in this non-stop adventure.

The world that Tim Scott creates is a fantastic collection of interesting ideas, vivid imagery and incisive social commentary. On top of that he’s laid out a riotous action plot coupled with interludes of penetrating observations. I knew I was hooked when he described a city that had been divided by music genres. Such a brilliant concept I’m green with envy!

The Classical section is high-brow and well maintained with sound ordinances and large signs that chide the noisy with large flashing ’shhhhh’ signs. In Jazz you have all sorts of strange free-form architecture but can’t be sure to get a decent pizza since they might be ‘experimenting’ with an ‘all olive’ phase. Or visit Compilation, the haven for those pale, boring souls who don’t have taste enough to identify with any one type of music. And stay away from Holiday Song, an area with perpetual snow and roaming, ho-ho-ho-ing Santas.

Scott takes readers on a fast-paced ride that reminds me of the movie After Hours and Brazil. It’s a desperate, funny, bizarre world where you (and the characters) are struggling to catch-up and digest what is going on. You don’t want to put the book down because you know something else is going to happen in the next few pages.

The only thing that distracted me was the mix of English and American phrases and places. Scott is English and that comes through unmistakably through his prose. However, the novel takes place in America in some sort of composite of Santa Cruz, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Perhaps the cultural collision is intentional and part of the alternate reality Scott wants to create. I don’t know, but it jolted me out of the regular reading and flow of the story.

Amid the Monty Python meets Philip K. Dick prose are amazing reflections on relationships, religion, reality and happiness.

On relationships:

I watched her character shrink before me and I felt so helpless. The spirit I’d loved her for had turned into fear, so that she no longer thought she could cope with the world; was so scared of the thought of being on her own that she crushed the present, suffocating any joy from life, and turned everything into a battle for survival. I knew this was not right - not for us, not for people who had a house and food and friends. And the more she clung to me, the more we both drowned, sinking under an invisible sea of desperation.

On religion:

Now the emphasis was on seeking peace rather than clinging to spurious explanations for our existence - and once the focus moved toward peace, religion seemed to lose a lot of its hold over the masses. Religions never had been interested in peace that much, anyway.

On happiness:

What mattered was regaining who I was, because the pleasure of being alive is not pining for different lives, or different things, but just being.

For every talking elevator who tells bad jokes there is a literary gem. Tim Scott gives readers both sizzle and steak; swashbuckling science-opera and high-minded literature. Read Outrageous Fortune and then wait for Scott’s next novel.

Brasyl by Ian McDonald is a bloated, confused novel that obscures an otherwise interesting story. Reading Brasyl was a struggle and I had to fight off the urge to put it down nearly every time I picked it up. The novel is composed of three different stories, one in the past, one in the present and one in the future. The plot revolves around the nature of the universe, or in this case the ‘multiverse’, and how these different stories converge and intersect.

I have never read Ian McDonald before and I’m not sure I will again. He’s received a lot of praise and some nice awards. I can only hope that his body of work that made it difficult for an editor to take a red pen to Brasyl. I’m not a writer (well I am, but I don’t get paid for it) nor an editor, nor an ivory tower literati. However, I think I can spot poor writing when I read it - and Brasyl has it in spades.

The warm humidity help and amplified smells; the fruity, blousy sickliness of the bougainvilleas that overhung the fundacao’s fighting yard, the rank smokiness of the oil from the lamps that defined the roda, the honey-salt sweetness of the sweat that ran down Marcelina’s upraised arm, the fecund, nurturing sourness of her armpit.

That’s but a sample of the overblown prose that litters the pages of Brasyl. McDonald can’t help but attach not one but (at least) two adjectives to every noun. More adjectives do not make better descriptions! McDonald does this repeatedly, not trusting the reader to use his or her imagination to fill in the blanks.

In addition, McDonald overuses native language. Again, it seems McDonald worked to put at least one native word per sentence. I’m not opposed to it as a rule, but in this instance it does little to enhance the story and makes it even more difficult to read. I know he’s trying to reach for Burgess or Gibson like dialects, but it simply never comes together.

McDonald also misses in his use of pop culture references. The mention of Mentos in Diet Coke is lame and far too ephemeral; the use of ‘alt dot’ is dated and misplaced; and the DJ competition scenes are unauthentic. Most of these are contained in the insipid, present day storyline that follows reality-programming producer Marcelina Hoffman.

The future storyline has some interesting elements, but they’re lost amid the prose and a flat romantic plot. Brasyl shines the most when in the past, following Father Luis Quinn and Dr. Robert Falcon into the Amazon. They are the most fully formed characters and their relationship is a strong point in the novel. It’s in this section that you get a (very) faint echo of the great Hyperion by Dan Simmons.

I can’t recommend Brasyl by Ian McDonald. It’s muddled, indulgent prose hides what might be an interesting story. Perhaps someone can comment on whether his earlier works merit reading.

The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi covers a wide range of weighty topics without seeming to lose focus and never sounds preachy. The story follows Karim Amir, a teenager in middle-class suburban London, born to an English mother and Indian father. Karim’s coming of age story explores themes of family, love, sexuality and racism.

At under 300 pages it’s a wonder Kureishi is able to cover so much ground with so few words. It’s not that his writing isn’t incisive (it is!), it’s simply economical and efficient. A simple page or two and you can feel the suffocating boredom of Karim’s family life like dust trapped in stale sunlight. But before you have a chance to fully digest and process the scene you’re on to the next vignette.

Purposeful or not, the speed in which events occur mirror the accelerated development that takes place during those teenage years. The time when everything seems to happen at once. It dawns on you that your parents are people with their own foibles; you’re experimenting with sex; you gorge yourself on music as a proxy for self-identity; you fall in love or lust; and you begin to comprehend subtext, drafted into a new and messy adult reality.

The Buddha of Suburbia would be an above average novel if limited to just these ’standard’ story lines. Overlay the cultural and racial tension and The Buddha of Suburbia becomes unique. It is no longer a Catcher in the Rye variant (not a phony), but a layered period piece and social indictment with self-identity as the centering plot device; whether it is Karim’s struggle to find his place in the world; or generations of Indian immigrants grappling with native versus adoptive customs; or the definition of family relationships in modern society.

However, I never really ‘felt’ for Karim, though I understood and appreciated his motivations and actions. Karim seems somewhat disconnected and aloof, which may be how Kureishi is able to quickly navigate from one thematic element to the other. I wanted to feel more for Karim, but instead I felt for his situation. Objective empathy instead of visceral reaction.

This made The Buddha of Suburbia more entertaining and light, yet less penetrating. Despite this lack of emotional depth, I recommend reading Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia.

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole sticks with you long after you finish reading. I was initially turned off as I began reading since the ‘protagonist’, Ignatius J. Reilly, is somewhat unlikeable. In real life, you’d run the opposite direction from Ignatius - and fast! He’s an unkempt, ill-tempered moralist with a dim view of nearly everyone else in his rather large orbit.

I’d heard quite a bit about A Confederacy of Dunces. If you’re at all interested in literature you have likely heard the one about the Pulitzer Prize won by a dead man. Sure enough, A Confederacy of Dunces, written by Toole in the early sixties, won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, 12 years after his suicide in 1969. Reading the foreword you learn that it was Toole’s mother, having tremendous faith in her son’s work, who made sure A Confederacy of Dunces saw the light of day.

Ignatius J. Reilly makes A Confederacy of Dunces unforgettable, though I could have done without the descriptions of his gas, flatulence and other ailments. As the centerpiece of the novel, Ignatius is an over-sized bowling ball that flattens everything in his path. Reilly is a self-serving sloth who can rationalize his way out of any situation, responsibility or principle. Toole uses Reilly to look critically at nearly all facets of life: family, sex, relationships, commerce, politics, education, race and class.

A Confederacy of Dunces also succeeds as a historical composition. Toole paints a very visceral portrait of New Orleans. It feels grimy and worn at the edges. It feels like there’s a burgeoning lower-middle class stuck between the past and the future. The characters and dialog are pitch perfect whether it’s the wealthy, quarrelsome couple who own a struggling clothing factory or Darlene, a simple young woman performing burlesque (poorly) in a French Quarter bar.

The story really begins when Ignatius is pushed into the work force to repay a debt that he incurred. Though he certainly doesn’t see it that way! Most memorable are the scenes at Levy Pants, where Ignatius finds a co-dependent doormat as a colleague and boss. It’s here that Ignatius is allowed to do the most damage. We’re treated to Ignatius whip-lashing back and forth between adoration and derision of both the owner and the poor working class. In particular, his ‘leadership’ of a worker’s riot and crippling forged missive to a business partner are astoundingly funny.

It’s tough not to think about Toole and whether this was a chronicle of his own inner struggle. He obviously had many opinions, sometimes conflicting in nature, which found voice in Ignatius. While the events are often humorous, it’s a black humor filled with sharp edges of anger, dissatisfaction and resentment.

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole is a fascinating book because I seem to like it more and more upon reflection. That’s high praise for any work of art. So, in this case you can believe the hype.