Thursday, 23 December 2010

KINDLE RACKS UP TREMENDOUS SALES AS EBOOKS GO MAINSTREAM

Sources close to Amazon have revealed that Amazon are very close to having sold an incredible eight million Kindle devices in 2010.
If the figures are confirmed, then it will be proof that the iPad,which sold more than 7.5 million units since it launched back in April, did not necessarily impede sales of the Kindle.
Last year, more than 2.4 million Kindles were sold and Amazon was keen to encourage adoption of the ebook reader even more by cutting the price of the device to £109 (for the non 3G model) and invest in a massive marketing drive.
Although other ebook readers have appeared on the market, Amazon still has the lead thanks to its first-mover advantage and the fact that its Kindle platform is still a proprietary one.

RELATED - E-books go mainstream. Look around you – how many people you know are reading digital books? Maybe it's your wife, child, mother-in-law. Maybe they have a Kindle or a Nook or an i-something-or-other. Last year, you'd have had a hard time finding anyone who'd read an e-book other than a few early adopters. This year, e-readers are the hot holiday gift. By this time next year, e-books will no longer be a novelty, they'll just – be

Publishing is changing, and just one sign of it is that both of 2010's big fiction prizes were won not by books from Random House or Penguin Group, but by books from small presses. In April, Paul Harding's Tinkers won the Pulitzer Prize for tiny Bellevue Literary Press, a nonprofit publisher affiliated with New York University's School of Medicine. Then, in November, the National Book Award for fiction went to Jaimy Gordon's Lord of Misrule from equa

3 comments:

Oscar Case said...

It's sad that the paperbacks will be an item in the history books the way it's going.

Gary Dobbs/Jack Martin said...

Oscar - the paperback's been completely devalued. Now I'm not saying that's good because it isn't but it is a fact.The supermarkets in the UK sell papebacks for £1 on selected titles which is less that the books cost to be produced per unit. And bestseller Girl with Dragon Tattoo for £3.69 when the correct price is £7.99. It seems good for the consumer but in the long run it will kill the paperback market. eBooks must succeed if writers, other than a select few, are to have any future whatsoever.

Maneesh Kalra said...
This comment has been removed by the author.