Quote:
Originally Posted by Steven Lake
I highly question Amazon's numbers. They're known to throw out bold faced lies in order to make themselves look far better than they really are (it's the only thing that saved them from bankruptcy), and having them throw out highly doctored numbers to help improve their kindle sales is not at all surprising to me.
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Well, that's your choice, of course, to simply not believe Amazon.
But Amazon is a public company and the board of directors and folks like Jeff Bezos are obligated to "tell the truth" in public. The operational stats you are referring to were released concurrent with financials for Q2. If Bezos can be shown to have
materially mis-led the public, he can be sued, he can go to jail, he can be fined heavily and can find himself, and the company, at the receiving end of a very nasty class action suit.
If Apple states it sold 3 million iPads in two months, I don't think they really sold 100,000 and the other 2.9 million are in some warehouse or landfill. Similarly, if Amazon says it sold more paid e-books than hardcovers in 2010, and that they sold more hardcovers are the same time; that it sold 75% of all the James Patterson e-books ever based on the ABA figs; that it sold over 1 million Stieg Larsson ebooks ... I believe him (and Amazon). Under court order, it would be child's play to prove him right or wrong. And wrong has desperate personal and corporate consequences.