Not enough titles available for Kindle?

[Mike L]

On the Letters page of PC World magazine (July 2009, p. 7), a reader describes how he returned his Kindle 2. The reason: "the small number of titles available".

He writes: "Kindle has 245,000 titles, which sounds like a lot. But Amazon currently have over 26 million real books for sale. .... Unless you only read best sellers (and relatively recent one) or classics, you will need to continue dragging books around."

That sounded extraordinary to me. Leaving aside whether that figure of 26 million could possibly be correct (are there really that many books in print at any one time?), I would have thought 245,000 electronic titles would provide enough choice for the most avid of readers.

For a little experiment (not at all scientific), I listed the ten last printed books I read (before I decided to buy an electronic reader), and then checked their Kindle availability.

For what it's worth, here are my results:

Available in print and for Kindle:

Echo Park (Michael Connelly)

Split Images (Elmore Leonard)

The Last Tycoon (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

How to do everything with your iPod & iTunes (Guy Hart-Davis)

Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer (James Swanson)

Complete Brigadier Gerard (Arthur Conan Doyle)

Battle Cry of Freedom (James M. McPherson)

Available in print but not for Kindle

Cole Porter (William McBrien)

Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart (John Guy)

So, 80 percent of my personal sample are available for the Kindle. I wonder what books the letter-writer reads that are only available in print.

It would be interesting to see if anyone else's listing are in line with my results.

[daffy4u]

There are no ebook retailers that have every book in print available as ebooks. It's going to take time to convert them. Jeff Bezos has a 5 year plan of which 1 year has passed (I think it will take longer).

For some, there aren't enough of the type of books they like to read. For others, like me, there is more than enough.

[desertgrandma]

Originally Posted by daffy4u

There are no ebook retailers that have every book in print available as ebooks. It's going to take time to convert them. Jeff Bezos has a 5 year plan of which 1 year has passed (I think it will take longer).

For some, there aren't enough of the type of books they like to read. For others, like me, there is more than enough.

And for some.......nothing is never "enough".....

[Mike L]

Just to add another point ....

The letter-writer I mentioned also said that he was "initially excited" about getting a Kindle. It was only after he looked at the number of available titles that he decided to send it back.

Wouldn't it make sense to research the availability before you order the device? Or is that too obvious?

[tklaus]

Despite the numbers, it is true that there are big gaps. It seems that most of the books are either relatively recent, or classics (out of copyright). Much of the classic science fiction books (50's, 60's) are missing. For example, there are only 12 Robert Heinlein books available (I have 29 on my shelf). It is getting better though, when the K1 came out that number was zero. The lack of Tolkien books was also a big hole, but that has been recently rectified.

[lilac_jive]

Originally Posted by Mike L

Just to add another point ....

The letter-writer I mentioned also said that he was "initially excited" about getting a Kindle. It was only after he looked at the number of available titles that he decided to send it back.

Wouldn't it make sense to research the availability before you order the device? Or is that too obvious?

Especially if you're reading less common stuff.

[wallcraft]

Backlists are the big money makers for authors on the Kindles, see Jerry Pournelle on the Kindle DX, but they are still relatively slow to appear and there are many popular authors with essentially no ebooks available. In Science Fiction, for example, I would buy the entire backlists of David Brin and Steven Brust if they were available.

[kevindorsey]

They do expand quite quickly, so this should be a non-issue for most people.

[sirbruce]

1. Amazon's Kindle books are already over 300,000... they add 500+ books per day typically.

2. No one else has even that many. Note this is not counting the millions of public domain books out there for free that will work on almost any device. There are very few books that are available for another reader that are NOT also available on Kindle, but quite a few books that are available ONLY on Kindle and not elsewhere.

3. Yes, Amazon has 26 million (more now) print books listed. But remember, millions (maybe even more than 50%) of those books are simply placeholders for books that are not currently in print; they allow you to buy and sell used copies. There's no easy way to tell exactly how many books are currently in print via Amazon. The nice thing about ebooks is that they are always in print.

4. So the real question is, not whether you can get an ebook for a book that's out of print physically (though that is a nice advantage of ebooks, and you often can), but whether or not you can buy new ebooks for books in print. And the answer to that is generally yes, though there are still quite a few noticeable gaps. The industry is changing; 5-10 years from now every newly released book will have an ebook to go with it.

[lilac_jive]

Originally Posted by sirbruce

1. Amazon's Kindle books are already over 300,000... they add 500+ books per day typically.

2. No one else has even that many. Note this is not counting the millions of public domain books out there for free that will work on almost any device. There are very few books that are available for another reader that are NOT also available on Kindle, but quite a few books that are available ONLY on Kindle and not elsewhere.

3. Yes, Amazon has 26 million (more now) print books listed. But remember, millions (maybe even more than 50%) of those books are simply placeholders for books that are not currently in print; they allow you to buy and sell used copies. There's no easy way to tell exactly how many books are currently in print via Amazon. The nice thing about ebooks is that they are always in print.

4. So the real question is, not whether you can get an ebook for a book that's out of print physically (though that is a nice advantage of ebooks, and you often can), but whether or not you can buy new ebooks for books in print. And the answer to that is generally yes, though there are still quite a few noticeable gaps. The industry is changing; 5-10 years from now every newly released book will have an ebook to go with it.

I think we're already almost at that point. It's very rare now that I can't find a new release, even for my Sony.

[fugazied]

Honestly I've only had about 5-6 books which I 'really' wants for my Kindle but they weren't available.
Yes they are being added very quickly so I hope to see them soon. I think publishers are the real issue here? So as they realise that more and more people will be using Kindle instead of books they will speed things up.

[Patricia]

The person complaining about the number of titles available seems to think that it's a black-and-white either kindle or paper dilemma.
But I don't have any problem with reading most books on my Sony but also reading paper books when the ebook is unavailable. I'm still saving a lot of space, and don't have to dust the ebooks.

[krazy4katz]

I confess to having a backlog of books that I really want to read, but am willing to wait until they are available for the kindle. For example, only 2 of Margaret Atwood's novels are available, at least the last time I checked. I am discovering many new authors because their newer work (or as in Atwood's, perhaps the most famous?) is available, but when I want to read more of that author, nothing else is in ebook format. A bit frustrating, but there is plenty to read, so I can wait. k4k

[Witchbaby]

Originally Posted by Mike L

For a little experiment (not at all scientific), I listed the ten last printed books I read (before I decided to buy an electronic reader), and then checked their Kindle availability.

For what it's worth, here are my results:

This interested me, and as I am bored I experimented as well. I looked at my favorite bookshelf and picked 10 random titles. Here's what I got:

Available in Print/Kindle
Magical Thinking: True Stories – Augusten Burroughs (2004)
Fragile Things – Neil Gaiman (2006)
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War - Max Brooks (2006)
Wish You Well – David Baldacci (2000)

Print Only
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov (1955)
The Liar’s Club – Mary Karr (1995)
Alas, Babylon – Pat Frank (1959)
The Last Unicorn – Peter S. Beagle (1968)
999: Twenty-nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense – edited by Al Sarrantonio (1999)

50/50 isn't too bad. And the books that are only available in p-book format are older titles. Gatsby was the only older one available for the Kindle.

Originally Posted by sirbruce

3. Yes, Amazon has 26 million (more now) print books listed. But remember, millions (maybe even more than 50%) of those books are simply placeholders for books that are not currently in print; they allow you to buy and sell used copies. There's no easy way to tell exactly how many books are currently in print via Amazon. The nice thing about ebooks is that they are always in print.

I was thinking about The Stand ond LOTR being unavailable for a while because of formatting issues. (So I heard.) Which means we aren't guaranteed access to books that have been issued in e-book format.

(Although, I can't imagine why a publisher, or author would remove a book other than formatting or something similar. That would lead to some unhappy customers!)

[Mike L]

Originally Posted by Witchbaby

This interested me, and as I am bored I experimented as well. I looked at my favorite bookshelf and picked 10 random titles. Here's what I got
.....

50/50 isn't too bad. And the books that are only available in p-book format are older titles.

Thanks for posting your results. This is what I was asking for when I started this thread.

Although, on reflection, I suppose these results don't mean much, given that we are a self-selecting group. It's exactly because a relatively high proportion of our favourite titles are available that we own a reader.

Also, I agree with Patricia. It isn't an all-or-nothing issue. Although I'm an avid Kindle user now, I still greatly prefer unwinding with a "real" book when I've got time to relax. After all, you might like fine dining in a gourmet restaurant with white table linen and crystal glassware. But that doesn't mean you don't also grab a quick sandwich on the go.