
Amazon Sold Over 4 Million Kindles This Month; Gifting Of E-Books Up 175 Percent - FluidDjango
http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/29/amazon-we-sold-over-4-million-kindle-devices-this-month-gifting-of-e-books-up-175-percent/
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richardburton
Kindles are incredible. I read so much more because it is _so much more_
convenient.

The sad truth is that these devices will do to book publishing what iPods did
to music publishing. Piracy will suck a lot of cash out of the market.

~~~
pragmatic
> Kindles are incredible. I read so much more because it is so much more
> convenient.

Yes, totally agree.

> The sad truth is that these devices will do to book publishing what iPods
> did to music publishing. Piracy will suck a lot of cash out of the market.

It's so convenient to get a new book on the kindle (literally a few seconds)
that my _paid_ consumption of ebooks increased.

Formatting of pdf's on the kindle is hit and miss, pirating an ebook is
_inconvenient_.

I believe (and this is my opinion) that a major cause of piracy is lack of
access. I simply can't get a DRM free high quality digital copy of movies
(used to be books, except now Amazon has DRM free mp3's) legally.

As long as prices for ebooks remains reasonable (in the minds of most people)
I can only see increased consumption of ebooks.

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Simucal
I don't know if you have been keeping up with the pirating scene around ebooks
but there are now torrents with massive libraries of high-quality, drm-
stripped mobi (Kindle) files. It isn't all poorly formatted PDFs anymore.

~~~
jm4
Paying for Kindle books is still more convenient. I can buy a book at a fair
price and start reading in seconds. Dealing with torrents to steal a book is a
pain in the ass. It's for cheapskates that go out of their way to avoid paying
for anything. It's for people who take pride in having 2TB of pirated media,
most of which they will never getting around to looking at. In other words,
it's for people who will almost never become paying customers no matter how
friction-less the purchasing process is. There are some people that are just
into that kind of thing. They are not anyone's problem.

Piracy will become more widespread only because the ability to do so with
ebooks is more practical than with printed books. In the end it probably means
some people will get something for nothing instead of nothing for nothing. I
don't think this is a situation where people who were previously buying
printed books are now pirating ebooks.

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evgen
Everything you just said about books was once said about music. The difference
is that the addressable market for books is much smaller and there is no
alternative revenue stream like live events or related merchandise to prop up
the revenue decimation that is rolling downhill towards authors. If I were to
make a prediction it would be that decreased production/distribution costs
will increase the amount of mediocre crap cluttering up the marketplace by an
order of magnitude (leaving an opening for good filter/recommendation
services) and the better authors will retreat to essays and short-form works
that are kept behind a paywall.

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chj
two of them (fire) are from me. Seriously doubt that I would buy another ipad
again.

~~~
pragmatic
I have one, enjoy it and use it very much.

If they get the software figured out (tapping is wonky) this would be a 5 star
device, as it is now, it's a 4 star device.

~~~
sigzero
Amazon put out an update. Did you update yours or is it still wonky after
that?

~~~
Terretta
Still wonky. But -- it won't bother you if you don't use iOS.

If you've never used iOS, you're used to having touch response delayed or
misinterpreted, or completely missed, or responding at a different scale of
movement than your finger's movement. The Fire will do what you expect, which
is, act like that too.

I let a colleague play with the Fire, which he had ordered but not yet
received, while on a business trip. I gave him the Fire the first evening. He
_loved_ it. He was ecstatic. He'd never used an iPad, and his phone is
Blackberry. He raved about it. He couldn't wait to get his.

Next evening I took the Fire away and gave him the iPad. He used the same
apps: Kindle, Netflix, Hulu+, web browser. He thought it was great. "Sure, the
screen's twice the size, and reading the web seems a little easier, but
they're basically the same."

The third evening, I gave him back the Fire. Next day, he was not just
despondent, but frustrated to the point of irritation: "This thing just
doesn't do what you tell it to!" He no longer wanted the Fire, and decided to
get an iPad instead.

Since launch I've maintained the Kindle Fire is fantastic for consuming
commercial media within Amazon, Netflix, and Hulu, either if $200 is your
budget cap or you've never used iOS.

I've owned several of the other tablets, and they just don't compare to the
Kindle Fire for simplicity and ease of use. The Kindle really can be just
picked up and used, and that's huge. It's very likely that someone who gets
one won't miss what they don't know. They'll likely happily stick with future
versions.

Sort of makes one wonder what's wrong with the other Android tablet makers.

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r00fus
The most interesting bit here is that Amazon is finally releasing (some)
numbers.

1m/week is very good, but weren't they already expecting to sell 5M Kindle
Fires alone this year?

Amazon could get away no or sparse data with the eInk Kindles. Now they're
competing in the tablet (which is according to some, a PC) market, that kind
of secrecy won't work in the same way.

