Kindle and The New York Times. Really?!
The New York Times recently did a piece on the rise in popularity of ebooks. The centerpiece of the article was the popularity of Amazon’s Kindle.
It is difficult to quantify the success of the Kindle, since Amazon will not disclose how many it has sold and analysts’ estimates vary widely. Peter Hildick-Smith, president of the Codex Group, a book market research company, said he believed Amazon had sold as many as 260,000 units through the beginning of October, before Ms. Winfrey’s endorsement. Others say the number could be as high as a million.
Really?! (I sound like Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers on SNL.)
Earlier this year a number of Internati were throwing around sales numbers for Kindle. In particular, TechCrunch and Mark Mahaney came out with projections and models. 240,000 units sold! That was the meme making its way around the Internet. Amazon quickly responded to these figures and deemed the Kindle estimates ‘extremely high’. Not inaccurate or slightly off base but ‘extremely high’.
But that doesn’t stop The New York Times from using figures between 260,000 and 1 million. 1 million! Really?!
If that were the case I’m guessing Amazon would have been a lot more vocal about the numbers. Heck, they might have been forced to if it had reached a material threshold.
Perhaps The New York Times has some insight we don’t since they are a premier partner, showcased as one of the periodicals that can be delivered via Kindle. Maybe they’ve seen huge subscription numbers that make them certain that Amazon is just sandbagging and keeping expectations in check.
New York Times Co. executives said today during the company’s second-quarter earnings call that the newspaper has sold a “small amount” of subscriptions on the Kindle.
Really?! Yup, that’s from a July 23 Bloomberg article.
So, Amazon won’t divulge anything of substance except to say that the projections being thrown around are ‘extremely high’. On the other side we have an army of affiliates (people with an abiding interest in the success of the product) promoting the fabulous merits of Kindle far and wide.
Well, maybe doing some research on search trends will show this amazing Kindle popularity.
Really?! Well, that Oprah endorsement certainly helped but … it’s still behind the Zune and oh … Mushroom. Now, perhaps Mushroom isn’t fair. Maybe you think there are a bunch of college kids looking up mushrooms for various and sundry reasons.
Really!? So, Oprah got Kindle just above Towel. OMG! Stop the presses!
Where do you suppose these searches are being performed? New York? Illinois? California?
Highest search volume index? Washington. Really!? Sure, Seattle is one of the most literate cities but … it’s also the headquarters for Amazon.
So, despite no actual sales data, previous statements that projected sales numbers were ‘extremely high’, a financial bias from most promoters and limited evidence of popularity via search The New York Times jumps on the Kindle bandwagon.
‘Journalism’ around Kindle has been nonexistent.
A more interesting story surrounding Kindle would be looking at how Amazon has performed as a hardware manufacturer. This is a very big change for Amazon and is, in my opinion, outside of their comfort zone. Think about your local mall deciding it wanted to start selling widgets. How do you think they’d fare?
Years ago when I first heard rumblings of Amazon building their own reader, the scuttlebutt was that they were finding it difficult to secure materials. Fast forward and we’ve seen Amazon twice go out of stock of Kindle. Most assumed that demand had simply outstripped supply.
Really?! We all know what happens when you assume.
