Track # of Amazon ebooks that are available

[poohbear_nc]

589,801

[J. Strnad]

I don't think the raw number of titles matters. What it comes down to is, "I want THIS book. Who has it, and at what price?"

This is why I'm in favor of the most open format available, which right now seems to be epub. If you're looking for a particular title, the more stores it might be in, the better your chances of finding it and the lower the price is likely to be.

It doesn't matter how much stuff you don't care about a store has. (Man, is that an awkward sentence or what?) What are you looking for, and who has it, and how much does it cost? That's all that matters. It could be that a relatively small store caters to your kind of material, and if so, that might suit your needs perfectly.

The internet is amazing to me not just because of the sheer volume of material available, but because, if you have a special interest, the chances are good you'll find a website devoted to that interest.

[tripad]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Here's a chart. (x axis days since 22 November 2007, y axis number of Kindle books available at Amazon, blue line best fit.) Yes, the past few days have been WAY above the norm. I also attach the numbers used in the plot as a text file. (Numbers culled from this thread).

Exponentially growing, it will hit 1 mill very soon

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by tripad

Exponentially growing, it will hit 1 mill very soon

Not exponential - I tried a fit to a curve of Books = K^Time, and it doesn't fit very well - best is when K is just 1.0014

The curve I used for the fit is very roughly Books = 9*Time^1.58

The last data point also shows that the massive growth of the last few days has slowed or stopped.

[poohbear_nc]

As far as I can tell, part of the recent massive growth was the addition of Tor titles. Plus there has been an increase in the addition of back list titles - for example, the Nero Wolfe series is being added.

[poohbear_nc]

591,259

[NavyDad6]

595,708

[poohbear_nc]

597,078

[poohbear_nc]

601,304

How soon before it hits 1 million?

[poohbear_nc]

605,605

[Sydney's Mom]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Not exponential - I tried a fit to a curve of Books = K^Time, and it doesn't fit very well - best is when K is just 1.0014

The curve I used for the fit is very roughly Books = 9*Time^1.58

The last data point also shows that the massive growth of the last few days has slowed or stopped.

Wait, that was tongue in cheek, wasn't it?

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Sydney's Mom

Wait, that was tongue in cheek, wasn't it?

Yeah, yeah. Can't tell anything by one data point. I know better really.

[EDIT]But as it turns out, my guess was right. See latest plot, attached.

[poohbear_nc]

609,707

[random50]

Originally Posted by random50

I bought the Kindle for academic books - I need a large library and will probably be moving to a different country eventually. Bit of a leap of faith as the selection is currently quite poor. Anyway, I'm going to add a couple of semi-random searches to the lists here periodically to see how the more specialized part of their library is improving (unless anyone objects...).

Update on this:

Manifolds 81 (was 58)
Riemannian manifolds 15 (was 12)
Complex analysis 77 (was 65)

Precalculus 9 (was 5)
College algebra 12 (was 2)

Steady if unspectacular progress in the 2 years since the original count. Some titles notable by their absence have since appeared.

[BenLee]

I too would like more academic texts available for the kindle. Unfortunately, by the looks of those numbers, I'm not gonna count on it. : (