What amazes me more is that Netflix began in 1997 and had the foresight to name themselves Netflix and not Mail-flix, yet they didn't begin streaming until 11 years later.
I wonder how long they were working on streaming before it was released. A lot of planning must have gone into something that beat the company's traditional model in just two years.
While that is true, notice Amazon didn't mention the revenue from Kindle books, just the units sold. The majority of those Kindle sales could be from $0.99 bargain books. In a way that would be even better for Amazon because it means the Kindle is complimenting rather than cannibalizing its dead tree sales. Either way, it's a little early to believe Amazon is getting more revenue or profit from Kindle books than from dead tree books.
Also, running the Kindle store has placed a burden on Amazon it didn't have with dead tree sales. If the Kindle Store is anything like the iOS App Store, free books outsell paid books by 6-to-1 or more. So Amazon has to pay the digital distribution costs for a lot of books that bring in zero revenue. That adds up and can chip away the profit it makes on non-free books.
I wonder how much this is true. I'm not doubting it, per se, but this is always argued when digital vs. analog comes up and I think it's a little presumptuous to say so. Let's consider this example:
1) It takes a big infrastructure to manage an eBook store. Amazon has to be able to deliver books at near instantaneous speeds. They have to deliver magazines and newspapers at a scheduled time (time is critical).
2) Amazon provides 3G delivery to (many of) its customers for free. It's not free for Amazon.
3) Amazon already has built up warehousing/delivery infrastructure and must maintain it because their retail business isn't going away. The cost of delivering a single book is not the same as for Barnes & Noble.
I'm starting to get really annoyed that the price of some ebooks is actually more than the price of the printed book. That is just ridiculous and publishers better check their greed quickly if they want people to keep paying for books.
For me this is a testament to intangible media. Items that you own but that require no space or attention (physical items need to be rearranged on occasion, dusted, etc...)
I often find myself buying books I want to read in the future simply because it's only $10-$25 and I don't want to forget about them (I never liked the wish lists for whatever reason). Which is easy to do since there's no penalty in space (either disk or physical)
I also find myself buying more from Amazon because I don't have to wait for shipping (and Kindle delivery actually makes getting the book faster than if I drove to the local Barnes and Noble)
So for me the Kindle has shifted my book purchasing to e-books but it has also dramatically increased the amount I spend on books from Amazon.
In this case convenience trumps freedom, it seems. I find Richard Stallman's arguments against what he calls the "Swindle" being defective by design, and taking essential freedoms away from readers, such as the ability to buy a book anonymously using cash, lending a book to friends and keeping it as long as you want.
Would it be that my first statement is true, or are consumers just not aware of this?
Its such a struggle for me deciding if I want print or Kindle. I'm doing research from these books usually so I need to be able to extract the text from them. For a print book, this involves a photography+OCR setup, which isn't that convenient but much quicker than transcribing. For Kindle, I have to transcribe because my OCR software screenshot reader only works on PC (which is 3 lbs heavier, is permanently married to an outlet, and sounds like an airplane taking off compared to my mac air).
On the issue of price, usually kindle is pretty good but so far used books+amazon prime can beat that price.
I own an old version. It's line by line, and accuracy depends on the typeface used, but I have generally loved having mine. (Sorry for the pop-up. It seems the URL will 404 without it.)
"Thursday’s announcement includes Kindle Singles, which are shorter pieces of writing, like a Fortune magazine article, and “no doubt helped them reach that ratio,” said Michael Norris, a senior analyst for Simba Information."
Interesting, unless I missed it the release doesn't specify how much of this is due to an overall decline in print sales, as opposed to a surge of Kindle ones.
For instance, I've bought no books from Amazon in the past year (very a-typical for me, historically).. but I don't own a Kindle. I've bought some e-books from other outlets for my iPad. So I'm "contributing" to the success Amazon is touting in the release based on the way they're laying it out.
I'd take recent talk of a 'decline in paper book sales' with a very big pinch of salt. Book sales spiked, coincidentally, around 2007-08, however year-on-year sales are still going up. Why the coincidental 2007-08 date for one of the biggest spikes in print publishing? Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, it had 500% pre-sale figures of Half-Blood Prince.
Despite being a supporter of ebooks, owning a Kindle and reading a lot, I still take Amazon's announcement with a whole bag of salt, because even a fistfull isn't enough for the inaccuracy allowed in their statement.
Firstly to all those not-in-the-know, ebooks have solely been cannibalizing the sales of mass market paperbacks, which is why most major publishers are pricing them around the same price point. Why? Because mass market books are no longer paying off the editorial costs, which is the biggest Publisher cost in producing a book as your typical book passes through the hands of 3 editors and often multiple proof readers and the hands of an actual copy editor.
By January 2011 figures from the AAP, total book (hardcover, paperback, ebook, audio-books and audio-ebooks) were down 1.9% over January 2010. Adult Hardbacks fell 11.3%, paperback (note these are generally the paperback versions of books by known authors) fell by 19.7% and mass market paperbacks (IE new authors) fell 30.9%. Children's Hardbacks stayed the status quo at a fall of 1.9%. Children's paperbacks sell 17.7%.
However, given eBook's 116% growth it likely helped skew the total book sale decline. Yet this isn't impressive yet as it attributes only 8.6% of total book sales. I'll be impressed when eBook sales hit what MP3 sales hit this year, which received little publicity - in that MP3 sales this year hit $5.7 billion. Physical sales hit $5.7 billion. IE MP3 has 50% sale share.
It may be a sign of what's to come, but I expect another 5 years before eBook sales even hit the same as mass market paper backs, and that will only be through massive declines in MMPB sale figures. I'd say about 8 years for trade paperbacks (Stephen King and all your lovely crime novelists) to be matched. However, this isn't really going to be a huge game changer as the bigger the market gets the more important marketing becomes. This will mean, the same as it does today, that the vast majority of eBook sales will be coming from the same authors it is today, just in a bigger proportion.
This is just a sales spike due to the new user period. When a user gets a ebook reader for the first time they will buy lots of books to fill the device, including books they already own. Once sales to new users drops off the sales rate will also flatten out. I believe digital will ultimately be the bigger platform in future due to convenience of buying a book and getting it instantly (rather than waiting for the post man).
This is the opposite of my experience: when I got my kindle, I bought one book, started reading it, and when I finished I bought the next. Over time, as I've become more confident that I'm going to use the Kindle long-term, I'm more willing to buy a book when I see it and "add it to the queue" rather than only buying when I need a new one.
The nice thing is that there's really no penalty to waiting until the very last second to buy the next book, even if you're traveling (unless you're actually on the plane.)
I went the opposite route - started out with buying nothing (pirated my books) and as I started slamming my way through books, I started buying the titles because they were better formatted and I wanted to support my favourite authors.
Not sure if the Kindle works the same way as an iPhone. I can see iPhone users buying lots of apps to show off their phone's capabilities, but ebooks look pretty much alike. So one is enough to show off the capabilities of the reader.
Congratulations again Amazon. The Guardian already said "Amazon customers bought more e-books than printed books for the first time on Christmas Day" back in 2009.. :-)
Since kindle books are cheaper to create, store and deliver, and the fact that these books cost almost the same as the dead tree version, do the authors get a larger cut of the profits when a kindle book is sold compared to when a paper book is sold?
It probably depends on who the publisher is. I would imagine smaller publishers would probably give better deals as a way to entice talent, whereas larger publishers like Random House would probably have a much bigger paper-publishing business to support and couldn't afford more generous terms.
[+] [-] bretthopper|15 years ago|reply
Amazon:
Kindle release: November 19, 2007
Date surpassed: ~May 2011
---
Netflix:
Streaming started: Fall/Winter 2008?
Date surpassed: ~November 2010
[+] [-] simonsarris|15 years ago|reply
I wonder how long they were working on streaming before it was released. A lot of planning must have gone into something that beat the company's traditional model in just two years.
[+] [-] patio11|15 years ago|reply
Next up on the disruption bus: literary agents and book publishers.
[+] [-] ansy|15 years ago|reply
Also, running the Kindle store has placed a burden on Amazon it didn't have with dead tree sales. If the Kindle Store is anything like the iOS App Store, free books outsell paid books by 6-to-1 or more. So Amazon has to pay the digital distribution costs for a lot of books that bring in zero revenue. That adds up and can chip away the profit it makes on non-free books.
[+] [-] MatthewPhillips|15 years ago|reply
1) It takes a big infrastructure to manage an eBook store. Amazon has to be able to deliver books at near instantaneous speeds. They have to deliver magazines and newspapers at a scheduled time (time is critical).
2) Amazon provides 3G delivery to (many of) its customers for free. It's not free for Amazon.
3) Amazon already has built up warehousing/delivery infrastructure and must maintain it because their retail business isn't going away. The cost of delivering a single book is not the same as for Barnes & Noble.
[+] [-] runevault|15 years ago|reply
No, really.
[+] [-] sdh|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TomOfTTB|15 years ago|reply
I often find myself buying books I want to read in the future simply because it's only $10-$25 and I don't want to forget about them (I never liked the wish lists for whatever reason). Which is easy to do since there's no penalty in space (either disk or physical)
I also find myself buying more from Amazon because I don't have to wait for shipping (and Kindle delivery actually makes getting the book faster than if I drove to the local Barnes and Noble)
So for me the Kindle has shifted my book purchasing to e-books but it has also dramatically increased the amount I spend on books from Amazon.
[+] [-] mahrain|15 years ago|reply
Would it be that my first statement is true, or are consumers just not aware of this?
[+] [-] MaxGabriel|15 years ago|reply
On the issue of price, usually kindle is pretty good but so far used books+amazon prime can beat that price.
[+] [-] jonknee|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JulianMorrison|15 years ago|reply
So put it in the scanner.
[+] [-] mikecane|15 years ago|reply
I own an old version. It's line by line, and accuracy depends on the typeface used, but I have generally loved having mine. (Sorry for the pop-up. It seems the URL will 404 without it.)
[+] [-] gnosis|15 years ago|reply
For me the biggest deal breaker is that it's not an open platform.
As much as I crave a Kindle, I think I'll wait a bit until the technology matures and more open alternatives surface.
[+] [-] codex|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] famousactress|15 years ago|reply
For instance, I've bought no books from Amazon in the past year (very a-typical for me, historically).. but I don't own a Kindle. I've bought some e-books from other outlets for my iPad. So I'm "contributing" to the success Amazon is touting in the release based on the way they're laying it out.
[+] [-] electromagnetic|15 years ago|reply
Despite being a supporter of ebooks, owning a Kindle and reading a lot, I still take Amazon's announcement with a whole bag of salt, because even a fistfull isn't enough for the inaccuracy allowed in their statement.
Firstly to all those not-in-the-know, ebooks have solely been cannibalizing the sales of mass market paperbacks, which is why most major publishers are pricing them around the same price point. Why? Because mass market books are no longer paying off the editorial costs, which is the biggest Publisher cost in producing a book as your typical book passes through the hands of 3 editors and often multiple proof readers and the hands of an actual copy editor.
By January 2011 figures from the AAP, total book (hardcover, paperback, ebook, audio-books and audio-ebooks) were down 1.9% over January 2010. Adult Hardbacks fell 11.3%, paperback (note these are generally the paperback versions of books by known authors) fell by 19.7% and mass market paperbacks (IE new authors) fell 30.9%. Children's Hardbacks stayed the status quo at a fall of 1.9%. Children's paperbacks sell 17.7%.
However, given eBook's 116% growth it likely helped skew the total book sale decline. Yet this isn't impressive yet as it attributes only 8.6% of total book sales. I'll be impressed when eBook sales hit what MP3 sales hit this year, which received little publicity - in that MP3 sales this year hit $5.7 billion. Physical sales hit $5.7 billion. IE MP3 has 50% sale share.
It may be a sign of what's to come, but I expect another 5 years before eBook sales even hit the same as mass market paper backs, and that will only be through massive declines in MMPB sale figures. I'd say about 8 years for trade paperbacks (Stephen King and all your lovely crime novelists) to be matched. However, this isn't really going to be a huge game changer as the bigger the market gets the more important marketing becomes. This will mean, the same as it does today, that the vast majority of eBook sales will be coming from the same authors it is today, just in a bigger proportion.
[+] [-] chalgo|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomkarlo|15 years ago|reply
The nice thing is that there's really no penalty to waiting until the very last second to buy the next book, even if you're traveling (unless you're actually on the plane.)
[+] [-] JonLim|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rmc|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tichy|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petercooper|15 years ago|reply
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/dec/28/amazon-ebook-...
[+] [-] jacques_chester|15 years ago|reply
What we're seeing here is a day after day pattern.
[+] [-] AdamGibbins|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] metaobject|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] javanix|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ez77|15 years ago|reply