

Bezos ‘astonished’ by Kindle success - edw519
http://www.newsweek.com/id/227751

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stingraycharles
This is marketing at its best. Consider the quote:

"today, for titles that have a Kindle edition, Kindle book sales are 48
percent of the physical sales."

That sounds really great: however, how much percent of the books have a Kindle
edition ?

In addition to that, more importantly, this is only within the Amazon
audience: I bet a lot more Amazon customers fall into the eBook audience than
the average audience of bookstores. But by stories like these, a lot of people
will be made aware of the success of the eBooks, and will be afraid of missing
out on something.

However, over here in The Netherlands, some numbers were released today:
60,000 eBook sales in 2009. Compare that to the total of 50,000,000 books
sold, and you can see eBooks still account for about 0.1% of the total book
sales. Hardly comparable to the "48%" named in the article.

~~~
patio11
_That sounds really great: however, how much percent of the books have a
Kindle edition?_

I have heard this question asked rhetorically approximately 15 times and
nobody ever seems to be willing to get their hands dirty.

The New York Times bestseller lists both identify and anoint winners in the
publishing markets, which are winners-take-most games where the head vastly
outsells the tail. You can read them online. You can also search for books on
Amazon. Combining these two processes in a revolutionary way produces the
following:

    
    
      Fiction: 
        The Lost Symbol (Dan Brown): KINDLE
        I, ALEX CROSS, by James Patterson: KINDLE
        UNDER THE DOME, by Stephen King  -- no kindle
        THE HELP, by Kathryn Stockett: KINDLE
        U IS FOR UNDERTOW, by Sue Grafton: KINDLE
        PIRATE LATITUDES, by Michael Crichton: KINDLE
        FORD COUNTY, by John Grisham -- no kindle
        THE LAST SONG, by Nicholas Sparks -- KINDLE
        THE CHRISTMAS SWEATER, by Glenn Beck et al -- no kindle
        THE LACUNA, by Barbara Kingsolver -- no kindle
    

So, to a first approximation, I'm going to guess that in excess of 60% of
titles sold in the United States weighted by sales have a Kindle edition
available.

Feel free to do the gruntwork for non-fiction. I think you will find pretty
much the same,

~~~
defen
Minor nitpick - the Lacuna is actually on Kindle. Not sure about the other
ones.

------
rykov
Anybody else see a bit of irony in having Fake Steve Jobs interview Bezos
about iSlate vs. Kindle?

