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11/30/09
Step 1: Market a device for two whole years
Step 2: Issue a price drop a few months before the holiday season
Step 3: Remain the exclusive retailer for said device
Step 4: ????
Step 5: Profit! (To an extent that is completely and intentionally unclear to everyone!)
Sorry John, I just had to.
11/30/09
Of course, it's obvious that the Kindle didn't outsell the iPod Touch by a long shot, but I am wondering what actual Kindle sales figures are... hmm.
11/30/09
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None of this is to say that the sales numbers aren't impressive. Maybe they are, but based solely on their statement, it's really hard to tell for sure.
Though, you're right, misleading or not, it's a pretty good marketing tool. A statement like that makes a lot of people take a closer look at the kindle to decide if they need one for themselves.
11/30/09
11/30/09
That's true. They really are just saying that it has outsold everything else they sell. That's fair and not misleading of them to say. But it's hard to tell if this statement is really impressive or not, without any numbers behind anything.
Think of this example. If I were a company and I offered 1 million different items, and I sold 10 of each of those items in a year, I would have sold 10 million items that year. I'd have moved a lot of items. If I then introduced a new item and it sold ten times as many units as any other item - a total of 100 units, I would say it's my best selling item by far - factor of 10x. Since I move a lot of product (10 million items per year!!) that would seemingly mean something (to people who don't know the numbers) to say that it's my best seller. But, is 100 units really all that impressive?
Granted that is an extreme example just to get my point across. Do you see the problem here? The overall problem is two-fold I guess (as I see it). We have no idea how many units were sold, so we don't know how impressive the statement "amazon's best seller" is for ANY item, never mind the kindle, and on top of that, it's not surprising that it has (relatively) high sales, because everything else they offer can be bought anywhere, but the kindle cannot be.
Still the statement is true, and I'm sure we can all realize that it is not completely meaningless that it is the case. In my mind it's just a matter of how meaningful it truly is.
11/30/09
11/30/09
And honestly, this entire thing sounds like another format war - like Blu-Ray vs. HD DVD. Various publishers will go with one e-Reader (i.e. like Disney went with Blu-Ray) or another (like how Universal was with HD-DVD) and some will support both (i.e. Warner Brothers or Paramount iirc). But eventually, publishers will start going to one device because that's where the customers are, and either the Nook or the Kindle will die out. The Nook isn't exactly late to the party but like any format war, its future is uncertain.
The only way out is to establish a common e-Book format that will work on everyone's reader, allowing competition between multiple stores and multiple devices and ensuring that customers don't get ripped off with movies (ahem, books) being trapped to an obsolete reader.
#speakup
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11/20/09
I long for the day then color e-books readers are cheap enough to get an option and comic books companies embrace digital distribution because then I can get rid of all of my comic books too. Even if you only read 3-5 a month those things start taking up significant amounts of space in a short amount of time. I'm about to fill my second long box in 4 years.
11/20/09
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