Analyst predicts $750M worth of Kindle sales by 2010

[ampersandrew]

There are now no less than 3 kindle products in that top selling list higher than the sony reader. I wouldn't trust those figures at all. There are no solid sales figures for a start and this is 100% under amazon's control.
Far, far too easily manipulable by Amazon to give it any credence whatever.

[honeybunny]

I know, I am not the one that made the claim. He/she may have determined it a different way. Don't shoot the messenger.

[daffy4u]

I asked weatherman about how the determination was made because:

a) The Sony reader has been selling longer than the Kindle
b) there seems to be a mystery as to how many Kindles have sold period
c) even after Kindles began selling, there was a major shipping issue due to not enough Kindles being in stock which could have caused sales to be lost to the Sony

Weatherman may have some statistics that would give a clearer light on sales for both readers.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by weatherman

Ironically the Sony Reader seems to have gotten a big bump from all this talk about ebooks...

I'd expect that. Besides the added press, the Sony reader is a lot more visible on the Amazon site than it is in many bookstores (remember, not all of them carry Sony readers), and its looks alone are probably a big help to sales when compared to the Kindle. (I also wouldn't be surprised to discover that some readers didn't know the difference between Amazon's system and Sony's, and think that the Sony readers will give them access to Amazon content, and better looking besides.)

[mikolaj]

Well "Figure 1" from this report certainly doesn't help it's credibility:



Did that jetbook get there by mistake, or have I missed a major development in the market???

That's from techcrunch

[rmeister0]

Originally Posted by kevinpars

Apple's pricing is legal but I certainly would not call it cheap. 99 cents a song is a lot of money.

...of which the record labels get 70%, and they think they're getting ripped off.

[weatherman]

Originally Posted by daffy4u

How were you able to determine that? Not saying it's not true, I just want to know how you figured that out.

Amazon Sony Reader 505 page says that 45% buy the Kindle, 46% buy the 505 (37% blue and 9% silver). But I just realized a hole in my argument; the figures are for people viewing the 505, so if people never even look at the 505, they might not be included. There is no similar stat on the Kindle page so it's hard to tell what people coming just to see the Kindle might buy instead. If you sort Amazon's ebook offerings by "best selling" the Kindle does come up first, but the Sony Readers are listed separately for silver and blue, and they rank 5 & 6 respectively.

[6charlong]

I think that we make a mistake when we concentrate on eBook hardware. Content is the key. The market will change when content developers--meaning the publishing houses--realize how inefficient paper books are. In particular, how much land, labor, capital and energy are needlessly wasted to produce books, magazines and textbooks on paper.

When the publishing houses work out the real economics involved they will start new projects as eBook developments, working on an eBook edition directly with authors right from the start. Starting with an electronic edition enables publishers to make files they can easily port to paper books for more or less simultaneous publication on paper. The database of eBooks available for sale can be allowed to grow indefinitely, preserving a copy of every book the house has published, and at the same time giving the public the chance to buy vastly more books than the trickle we now have.

Amazon is important because they have successfully used the internet to sell books in greater volume than any other “bookstore” in the world. Amazon achieved this by reducing wasted land, labor and energy and at the same time giving their customers more selection, better prices and greater convenience than any other bookstore could. The Kindle is the logical next step because eBooks further reduce those costs with the added efficiencies of greatly reduced energy costs over transporting paper books, as well as big reductions in the labor and capital needed to publish, stock, ship, and warehouse books.

Publishers have always been extremely conservative about new technologies (I think publishing “paperback books” was their last big innovation in the US). When they see the efficiencies demonstrated by Amazon and Borders (Borders is the actual vendor for Sony eBooks), the publishing houses will eventually get behind the innovation.

I think the role of hardware in all this is to give people something affordable--perhaps something like the Mentor--and in a variety of form factors. I’m probably just rehashing what everyone on this forum already knows.

Oh well.

[kellstr]

A huge advantage of the eBook over the physical book is weight. I am looking to move and packing all these books and carrying them out the door makes my back hurt. Reducing the paper will gain me space in the long run. And there is a lot to be said for that.

This leads into another area that eBooks would be perfect for: Textbooks. I haven't spent a lot of time on the forum yet but I haven't seen a mention of replacing 40 lbs of textbooks with the eReaders. Just download from the campus book store and go. I do think the first eReader that taps this market will be a huge winner because they will capture that market share of folks who are most likely to read.

Kelly

[Ebook lover]

Amazon looks pretty promising!

[brecklundin]

Originally Posted by Ervserver

I think Apple will release a reader

Actually I believe I recently read Mobipocket is releasing an version of their software for the iPhone and likely the iPod Touch also...

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by kellstr

This leads into another area that eBooks would be perfect for: Textbooks. I haven't spent a lot of time on the forum yet but I haven't seen a mention of replacing 40 lbs of textbooks with the eReaders. Just download from the campus book store and go. I do think the first eReader that taps this market will be a huge winner because they will capture that market share of folks who are most likely to read.

I totally agree. I longed for a device like that when I was in university. I think a device that is good for textbooks will be a sea change in the ebook market. Not only would such a device be great for business use as well as periodical content, which is way more popular than books, it will eventually become standard use for an entire generation. Once that happens it won't seem foreign to people to read on a device rather than a printed paper page. Right now we have a lot of bibliophiles that have a strong antipathy to reading devices. It's not just consumers. It's also people who work in publishing. They just don't see a hardware reader as appealing. They have an emotional attachment to a wood pulp book. It's not surprising when you think of all the happy memories us book-lovers have of the hours spent with our favorite stories. The paper page is evocative of that for many of us.

Personally, I think a paper book can be a thing of beauty. Most are not. Most are containers for content. While I would love to have gorgeous artisan printings of my most beloved books, I'm happy to have electronic copy for most things I read. With the right hardware reader, I can get just as immersed in a story as I can with a tree book. For some books, it's even preferable like my quickly-outdated tech books (which I would also like to be able to search) as well as periodicals. I think when electronic becomes the default, people will think more critically about when they truly want paper.

[honeybunny]

Unless they can make it cheaper than $400, I think the way to go for students is textbooks stored on a laptop. The textbook could be accessible via a web browser, and access could be controlled such that the student gets only the books he/she needs, and access is revoked after the course is over. Plus, the student could do other work on the device besides reading.

If they can make it for more like $100, schools may be able to afford to buy them and loan them to students. They need to be VERY durable. Also image support has to be a lot better. I tend to think the screen would need to be bigger, about the size of a standard text-book.

It would be great to AT LEAST have something like this accessible to vision-impaired students (I love the automatic large-print option). I was vision-impaired when I was younger, and let me tell you, those large-print textbooks are very heavy. I had to use a cart to 'carry' my books around. And you could equip it with text-to-speech too!

[Alisa]

If readers follow the general trend of technologies, they will get better and cheaper. Personally, I think we'll get to the point where it won't be a separate reader but a tablet PC with a highly readable, low power screen. It will be ultra portable and useful for a lot more than just reading. I don't think we're that many years off.

[Joe K]

I don't think e-readers stand a chance with science and engineering textbooks. Look at how engineering students mark up their texts with formula derivations and supplementary material. I could see e-readers used to platform textbooks for the social sciences. Further... with the ease of publishing, instructors could more easily use their course prep notes as the class "text".