Amazon Kindle e-book downloads outsell paperbacks

[jbjb]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I must disagree. Amazon's goal is to sell E-BOOKS, not Kindles. The Kindles are just a way to get people to buy e-books, but Amazon don't care if you read their e-books on a Kindle, a PC, a Mac, an iPad, an Android phone or tablet, a Blackberry, or whatever. Letting the Kindle read ePub books would entirely defeat the purpose of the exercise, which is to bring business to Amazon's e-book store.

Spot on.

/JB

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Catlady

I'm just wondering--with Agency books, so price is eliminated as a factor, do people with devices that can have both Kindle and Nook/Kobo/etc. apps buy epubs or Amazon books? That would be an interesting survey.

Ask and ye shall receive:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=119124

Courtesy of Maggie Leung. Good find.

As of last November, Kindle got 40% of iPad ebook sales, B&N got 12%, Apple 29% (impressive! expecially considering their limited catalog) and "other" (Kobo, Fictionwise, Baen, Feedbooks, etc) got 19%. If this kind of pattern recurs on Android (where there is no Apple app) Kindle would be running about 57% there and likely higher on Blackberry and WP7. Amazon's Kindle-everywhere strategy would seem to be working just fine.

BTW, they also discovered that Kindle owners (as a group) were buying about as many print books as before getting a Kindle. No immediate cannibalization in the sample.

Looks like ebook competition is alive and well so there is no need to fret about any monopoly just yet.

[SensualPoet]

I would not underestimate the tablet market and its influence on the ebook market in the coming months. Since most tablets support Kindle, Kobo and B&N, and one tablet supports those as well as Apple, the nirvana some folks are looking for has arrived: one device, all formats.

Both Amazon and Kobo are aggressively building the "one purchase, read anywhere" model and between them the two main formats are well covered internationally. B&N is also in the race, although constrains itself to the US market; and Sony, alas, continues to believe touchy-feely is more important than connectivity and that it really wants to sell devices, not content.

As much as I love my Kindle 3, and use my Kobo regularly (I'm actually buying more ebooks at Kobobooks than Amazon): down the road I can easily see a future in my household for both a Kindle 4 and a tablet that plays both my Kindle and Kobo purchases seamlessly. Amazon's ebook sales to customers who don't own a Kindle absolutely underscores how important the seamless purchase and use of the content is: the device is secondary. It may well be that "good enough" for a device (as long as it is connectable) is, well, good enough. But the bookstore will ultimately drive the success.

Or, as fjtorres might put it: "it's the attach rate, baby!".

[Ankh]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Nor can you read Adobe ADEPT books on readers that don't pay Adobe royalties. Or B&N ePubs on anything but Nooks or ireader books an anything not from Apple.
Playstation3 games don't play on Xboxes not do Nintendo games.
BluRay movies don't play on DVDs or PMPs.
What's the difference?

Why is Kindle such a problem for some people?
They're not doing anything that dozens of companies from Sony to Nokia do all the time.

Ah, but the situation with ePub and Amazon's own format is unlike any of the mentioned examples. You can read DRM-free ePubs on pretty much anything else. Amazon stands alone against the standard.

BTW, one of your examples, Blue Ray not being able to play on DVD players is an issue of technical obsolescence. Blue Ray players play DVD's just fine.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Ankh

Ah, but the situation with ePub and Amazon's own format is unlike any of the mentioned examples. You can read DRM-free ePubs on pretty much anything else. Amazon stands alone against the standard.

Who gets to decide that epub is the standard? The publishers?

Kindle format came first and has 80% of the US market. That sounds like a standard to me.

[elcreative]

More like a monopoly... you can only read Amazon eBooks on Kindles or with Amazon Kindle apps...

At least ePubs can be read on a variety of platforms (produced by different manufacturers) with a variety of software (produced by a variety of people/companies). If you don't like current platforms or software then you are free to develop your own... oh yes, the US is now an ever decreasing percentage of the world market...

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Who gets to decide that epub is the standard? The publishers?

Kindle format came first and has 80% of the US market. That sounds like a standard to me.

[mdmorrissey]

I don't see why it wouldn't work, Kali. If Amazon can make a profit being the go-between for used book sales, even though it must cut substantially into their new book sales, surely they could make a profit lending ebooks. Obviously they already have the infrastructure so they could do it. They should, because the exorbitant price wall for ebooks is going to come crashing down someday soon. Better to bite the bullet than get it in the butt. (You may quote me.)

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

And I go back to my lament, why doesn't BN, Kobo, and Sony sell Mobi? Clearly they don't want my dollars.

Because Amazon owns the mobi format and won't license it to anyone.

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by vaughnmr

And maybe they don't want to have to deal with the nightmare drm provided with Adobe ADE.

What nightmare? I haven't had a problem in the 3 years since Sony switched to ePub with ADE DRM.

[EowynCarter]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Kindle format came first and has 80% of the US market. That sounds like a standard to me.

Are you even aware there are countries and people outside the US ?

Seriously, this "only US matter" is insulting.

[speedlever]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

snip
To make it work Amazon would have to either:

1- price ePubs higher than azw's and whether the "gouging" complaints of the second-class customers
snip

So what if Amazon epub books cost $0.22 more than other books? Is that going to make or break a sale? Instead of $4.99, it's $5.21. Or instead of $9.99 it's $10.21.

Kindle users would get the $0.22 price break. Sony/Nook/Kobo users would have to pay the extra $0.22 to buy epubs from Amazon. I can't imagine it would be difficult to implement such a differentiation and offer epubs for sale to users of other than Kindle EBRs.

Now look, I realize I'm quite new to the EBR world and there is much I don't know. My ignorance probably stands out far more than I'm aware.

That being said, I view the format "wars" as a blight on the entire ebook world. From a consumer perspective, I fail to see why I can't read the book of my choice on the device of my choice.

As to formats, when I became aware of the issue during my early EBR research, I learned how to deal with them to accomplish my objective stated above.

Regarding epubs on Kindles, my understanding is that there may be performance reasons not to enable epub capability on the Kindle. As I understand it, making the dictionary functional as it is with Kindles is software specific relative to mobi,. But for whatever reason, dictionary support for epub is hardware specific. If that is true, that may well be a fatal flaw for the Kindle to ever support epub. But that shouldn't prevent Amazon from selling epub formatted ebooks.

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by speedlever

That being said, I view the format "wars" as a blight on the entire ebook world. From a consumer perspective, I fail to see why I can't read the book of my choice on the device of my choice.

The mechanism: DRM.

The reason: Device lock-in.

If you could just read the book of your choice on the device of your choice, you might decide that some other company sells a reader you like more than the Kindle. So you'd buy one of those readers, and you'd buy your books somewhere else, too. As it is now (the way Amazon likes it) you would have to throw away your entire library and buy it again. Since most people aren't going to do that, and even fewer will as ebook libraries get bigger, they'll stick with buying new Kindles, and since they have Kindles (either the physical or virtual model) they'll buy books in a format they can use ... it's a circle. It works out great for Amazon. For the people buying the books, of course, not so much.

Oh, and to correct a few misconceptions that have crept in:

There is no such thing as "Kindle format"; the Kindle is a device, and it uses a form of .mobi format.

The Kindle was not the first ebook reader, or even close to it. It was actually fairly late to the market.

[mdmorrissey]

DRM may be a pain in the butt, but how else can you protect property rights? I'm all for public domain myself as a reader, but as a writer I would like to make a buck or two with my work, if only for the psychological satisfaction. As I have been saying above, I think the answer is not in fighting DRM but in improving it so that ebooks can be sold used and lent/rent (either freely or for a fee). I predict that Amazon will do this -- and I will not even insist on a piece of the pie (though you are my witnesses).

[vaughnmr]

Originally Posted by rhadin

What nightmare? I haven't had a problem in the 3 years since Sony switched to ePub with ADE DRM.

If you look around in these forums you will see plenty of examples.

[queentess]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Why is Kindle such a problem for some people?
They're not doing anything that dozens of companies from Sony to Nokia do all the time.

Because people want to buy ebooks from Amazon, but they don't want a Kindle, and they don't want to admit they like Amazon's convenience and price and customer service, so they're angry.