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Analysts Say Kindle Now Creates Nearly 10% of Amazon’s Revenue

matthew — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 11:41:19 +0000

It seems that Amazon’s Kindle is poised to hit something of a milestone in terms of its influence on the company as a whole. A recently released Citi analysis has come to the conclusion that the Kindle now accounts for just short of 10% of Amazon’s total revenue, if you take into account all hardware and media. While this would be a big deal in any case, it apparently merits recognition by Citi because of a rule they have which states that any segment of a particular company must achieve 10% of its total business before it can impact the growth rate of the company. Surprisingly enough, this is not the only bit of interesting information on the report.

We all know by now that Amazon has been selling more eBooks than print books recently. It seems to be the start of a trend. When commenting on this development, the report also states that “We believe that industry-wide, eBooks will surpass Print books in terms of sales within 2-3 years.” Apparently this has held up in the UK as well, where the Kindle has experienced even more rapid adoption than in the US, with Kindle books already outselling hardcovers at a rate of 2-1. They also make note of the fact that Kindle book sales have managed to triple in the past year and show no sign of tapering off any time soon. This year over 310 million Kindle books will have been sold and next year we are looking at perhaps as many as 751.5 million. That’s a combined total of $3.8 billion from Kindles this year alone and as much as $6.1 billion next year.

Aside from numbers, what does this mean for the Kindle line? Well, estimates have been favorably improved recently. Amazon is now projected to sell 17.5 million Kindles this year and perhaps 26 million in 2012. In addition, the success of the Kindle w/ Special Offers, which has managed to become Amazon’s best selling eReader so far in the short time it has been available, lends merit to the idea that we may see a Kindle priced under $100 by the end of this year. According to many analysts, this is the tipping point whereat the Kindle can feasibly become an impulse buy for customers rather than an investment, giving it that much more influence over the eReading and Publishing marketplaces.

Interestingly, none of the Citi analysis’s predictions for the remainder of 2011 or 2012 make any note of the potential merits of the upcoming Kindle Tablet. While it has not been officially confirmed, which may well be the reason for the exclusion, it is hard to do research on Amazon at the moment without finding some information pointing out what’s coming. Given Citi’s use of actual numbers in their sales figures and projections, something that they certainly didn’t get from the notoriously tight-lipped Amazon, it is clear that they go more than a bit beyond press releases and PR interviews. It could have been interesting to see what their take was.

May 19, 2008 -- $750 Million in Kindle Sales by 2010 (4)

Kindle Books Hit New Milestone: Beating Out Paperbacks

matthew — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 12:29:25 +0000

So, as I recall it was last summer when Kindle books began beating out purchases of Hardcovers on the Amazon site. This was a big deal because it illustrated for people that eBooks were pretty clearly here to stay in a way that previous announcements of numbers (not that Amazon was the company making any involving numbers) and vague statements about the future of the industry couldn’t do. Now, Amazon(NASDAQ:AMZN) has issued a release announcing that in addition to achieving their first ever $10 Billion quarter, Kindle books are now outselling paperbacks by a fair amount.

Specifically, there are 115 Kindle Editions going out for every 100 paperbacks. There’s really no way to significantly top that as a milestone, that I can think of. From here on out, it’s all going to be iterations of the same. “Twice as many as paperbacks” and that sort of thing. A similar bit of info was put into the press release to tell us that over the same period as that being measures for that comparison with paperbacks, Kindle books outsold hardcovers by a factor of three. So, yeah. Big year.

Now, Amazon has a reputation for only giving us rather fuzzy numbers when it comes to anything having to do with the Kindle. We know that Kindle device sales numbers for the most recent generation are in the millions, but no more than that other than that they’re a bigger seller than the ever popular Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Nice to have some sort of reference point, of course, but hardly anything you can do specific analysis with.

Overall, good news, but it’s hard to say how good. We know that Kindle sales, and therefore almost certainly Kindle book sales, are up. The apps that they release for practically every possible platform with a screen, portable or otherwise, are ever more available and easy to use. This is good news for Kindle Edition sales as well. The only thing that we’re vague on right now is how good. No word if part of it involves a decline in paperback sales, or if half the sales for the year were immediately post-Christmas. There’s simply no way to determine if there was something huge making this possible. Was it, however unlikely, the announcement of Kindle for Windows Mobile 7 that put sales over the edge? The world may never know…

Regardless, some other points of fun information were included as well. There are now over 810,000 Kindle Editions for sale through the Kindle Store(and that excludes all free books, since that would bring it up into the millions). Of those books, over 670,000 are available for under $10. While I would love to have solid numbers on the Under $5 range, that’s still encouraging. Wider acceptance means better selection and hopefully more opportunities for readers. Maybe next year, Amazon won’t have any reason to point out that their sales number comparison didn’t exclude books with no Kindle Edition counterpart because that will be so rare as to not be an issue. Ok, yeah, that one’s probably a good way off yet, but it’ll be nice when we do see it.

June 15, 2011 -- Kindle Book Recommendations: Fantasy (0)
May 26, 2011 -- Amazon Kindle Now Sells More Books Than Print (0)
January 18, 2011 -- Kindle Book Recommendations: Biography (2)
December 23, 2010 -- Kindle Edition Gift Recommendations: Vampires (2)

Amazon.com Books For Kindle Count

Andrei Pushkin — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 11:30:54 +0000

Today I decided to take a break from Kindle 3 Reviews and do something I didn’t do for a long time – crunch some dry Amazon Kindle Store numbers.

I’ve been tracking number of amazon.com books and blogs for Kindle since March 2009. Previously I published these numbers on a monthly basis. With Kindle 3 released and getting great reviews it’s time I did so again.

Amazon.com Books for Kindle Count

There were 242,488 Kindle books when I started keeping track back in March 2009. Since then this number almost tripled to become 685,380. By looking at the graph you can see that apart from bump here and there the number of Kindle books still grows in a linear fashion. Largest spike to date (roughly 70K books) was in May 2010.

Amazon.com books by Genre

As you can see the majority of growth happened in non-fiction and history genres. Now lets dig deeper into smaller categories.

Amazon.com Book For Kindle By Genre

If you look at this graph carefully you will see that back in 2009 “Comics & Graphic Novels” and “Cooking, Food & Wine” categories didn’t exist at all. They first appeared in October 2009 and May 2009 respectively.

Amazon.com Blogs For Kindle Count

Number of blogs more than doubled since I started keeping track and just crossed 10,000 mark several days ago. Although you can only subscribe to blogs that published themselves on Amazon Marketplace, you can still read the rest in the browser. Although this is not as convenient.

Amazon.com Blogs For Kindle By Category

As you can see, most of the growth can be attributed to “Lifestyle & Culture” category.

So effectively the amount of content available for Kindle more than doubled over last 18 months. Impressive, isn’t it? But if we look past raw numbers, the picture can definitely be better. eBook industry right now is where digital music industry was years ago. Publishers are still wary of the new technology and sometimes don’t want to deal with it. While Amazon as a store works hard to get the most bang for the buck by signing on books from bestseller lists (and I have to admit they do a good job at it too) many great by not so currently popular books stay overboard.

Try searching for Robert Heinlein books on Kindle for example. You’ll find only six. But don’t rush to trade your Kindle in for Nook, Sony eReader or even iPad – you will find exactly the same selection there – I’ve checked. However if you head over to pretty much any torrent tracker you will find full Heinlein bibliography floating around in zipped PDF files. So while publishers cling to their old business models or argue who is going to charge whom and how much, books are being pirated because there is absolutely no way to get these and other works of literature in digital form. Hopefully it will get better just as it did with music industry.

I’ll wrap up with the usual daily Kindle 3 checkup. There are 264 (up 44 from yesterday) Kindle 3 reviews so far on amazon.com with the following breakdown: 179 – 5 positive star, 42 – 4 star, 10 – 3 star, 10 – 2 star, 23 – 1 negative star. Kindle 3 is still backordered until September 17th.

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Kindle Books from March 2009 to May 2010

Andrei Pushkin — Tue, 04 May 2010 14:45:47 +0000

It has been 14 months since I monitor Kindle book store size on a daily basis. I started it in April 2009. Back then Kindle software 2.0.2 was just released, Amazon was being sued by Discovery Communications and Amazon itself was sending DMCA takedown notes to MobileRead.com, Fujitsu FLEPia was expected to take eReader market by storm with it’s color eInk and first rumors about what would become 9.7″ Kindle DX surfaced. Kindle Book Store just broke 250,000 book margin back then…

Now there are 510,000+ books in Kindle Store and counting. I used to publish Kindle book numbers on a monthly basis but then I got lazy. It is time to fix this and publish all 14 months worth of data at once!

As you can see, the book count was increasing in more or less linear fashion. There may be some seasonality or irregularities to it. Hard to say since one year is clearly not enough to spot seasonal trends (if they exist in publishing industry).

Month	Book Count
March, 2009	242,488
April, 2009	258,210
May, 2009	274,996
June , 2009	295,420
July, 2009	309,410
August, 2009	336,865
September, 2009	349,661
October, 2009	342,556
November, 2009	368,748
December, 2009	385,497
January, 2010	401,894
February, 2010	415,370
March, 2010	451,280
April, 2010	480,277
May, 2010	509,349

May 12, 2009 -- Kindle Book Count – March & April 2009 (6)

October 2009 Summary

Andrei Pushkin — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 11:59:53 +0000

If you recall, there was a massive drop in book numbers in the last day of September. Well during the first week of October these books came back. So if we disregard this anomaly and consider 357,724 to be the final count for September, then with the final count for October being 368,373 we get an average of 343 books per day added. Otherwise if we take 372,556 to be the initial count then average increase would be 835.

Kindle Book Count for October 2009

The number of Kindle blogs increased from 7,179 to 7,355 (+176) giving us 5.7 new blogs per day on average. Notice weekly sharp drops. It looks like Amazon is either reviewing blogs on a weekly basis or they are just pruning out stale/dead blogs periodically. If you know of a blog that was on Kindle and no longer is – please let me know. This blog is still there – alive and well.

Kindle Blog Count for October 2009

As for events, there were several major Kindle related themes in October 2009:

The biggest of all without a doubt is the international release of Amazon Kindle and everything related to it.
Then there were geographical restrictions that went into effect before international Kindle was unveiled.
Kindle for PC application was announced on the day Windows 7 was launched.
Amazon started selling refurbished Kindle DX for $399.00

I’ve been quite busy with different things during the month of November so I didn’t blog as much. I know it’s almost time to be writing November summary, but better late than never.

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Kindle International Coverage Update Before Launch

Andrei Pushkin — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:51:06 +0000

I’ve been keeping track of the number of books that is available to every country with the intent of publishing the delta like the previous one. However in the last couple of days updates were so many that it doesn’t make sense to highlight any country in particular. Pretty much every since one has gotten 10..80K extra books between the announcement of international Kindle release and the actual ship date which is today. The few countries that didn’t see any change were the ones who started with high book counts to begin with (more than 280,000).

After the release of international Kindle was announced, several people have complained that many interesting books were not available to their non-US Amazon accounts. Hopefully these changes should at least partially solve this problem.

If you have previously tried to buy a Kindle book and couldn’t because of geographical restrictions, you try it now and drop a comment here whether it worked on not.

Country	Ship date	Announce date	Change
Aland Islands	240,000	160,000	80,000
Albania	250,000	170,000	80,000
American Samoa	260,000	180,000	80,000
Andorra	250,000	170,000	80,000
Angola	250,000	170,000	80,000
Anguilla	290,000	280,000	10,000
Antigua and Barbuda	290,000	290,000	-
Armenia	250,000	170,000	80,000
Aruba	300,000	290,000	10,000
Australia	280,000	280,000	-
Austria	290,000	280,000	10,000
Bahamas	290,000	290,000	-
Barbados	290,000	290,000	-
Belarus	250,000	170,000	80,000
Belgium	290,000	280,000	10,000
Belize	250,000	170,000	80,000
Benin	250,000	170,000	80,000
Bermuda	250,000	170,000	80,000
Bhutan	250,000	170,000	80,000
Bolivia	260,000	180,000	80,000
Bosnia and Herzegovina	250,000	170,000	80,000
Botswana	250,000	170,000	80,000
Brazil	300,000	290,000	10,000
Bulgaria	250,000	170,000	80,000
Burundi	250,000	170,000	80,000
Cambodia	250,000	170,000	80,000
Cape Verde	250,000	170,000	80,000
Cayman Islands	290,000	290,000	-
Central African Republic	250,000	170,000	80,000
Colombia	300,000	290,000	10,000
Congo	250,000	170,000	80,000
Cook Islands	250,000	170,000	80,000
Costa Rica	300,000	290,000	10,000
Cote d’Ivoire	240,000	170,000	70,000
Croatia	290,000	280,000	10,000
Cyprus	290,000	280,000	10,000
Czech Republic	290,000	280,000	10,000
Democratic Republic of the Congo	250,000	170,000	80,000
Denmark	290,000	280,000	10,000
Dominica	250,000	170,000	80,000
Dominican Republic	300,000	290,000	10,000
Ecuador	260,000	180,000	80,000
El Salvador	260,000	180,000	80,000
Equatorial Guinea	250,000	170,000	80,000
Estonia	250,000	170,000	80,000
Ethiopia	250,000	170,000	80,000
Falkland Islands	250,000	170,000	80,000
Faroe Islands	250,000	170,000	80,000
Federated States of Micronesia	250,000	170,000	80,000
Fiji	240,000	160,000	80,000
Finland	290,000	280,000	10,000
France	290,000	280,000	10,000
French Guiana	260,000	180,000	80,000
French Polynesia	250,000	170,000	80,000
Gabon	250,000	170,000	80,000
Georgia	250,000	170,000	80,000
Germany	290,000	280,000	10,000
Ghana	240,000	160,000	80,000
Gibraltar	250,000	170,000	80,000
Greece	290,000	280,000	10,000
Greenland	260,000	180,000	80,000
Grenada	290,000	290,000	-
Guadeloupe	290,000	290,000	-
Guam	300,000	290,000	10,000
Guatemala	260,000	180,000	80,000
Guernsey	240,000	160,000	80,000
Guinea-Bissau	250,000	170,000	80,000
Guyana	300,000	290,000	10,000
Haiti	260,000	180,000	80,000
Holy See	250,000	170,000	80,000
Honduras	260,000	180,000	80,000
Hong Kong	290,000	280,000	10,000
Hungary	290,000	280,000	10,000
Iceland	290,000	280,000	10,000
India	280,000	270,000	10,000
Ireland	280,000	280,000	-
Italy	290,000	280,000	10,000
Jamaica	300,000	290,000	10,000
Japan	290,000	280,000	10,000
Jersey	240,000	160,000	80,000
Kenya	250,000	170,000	80,000
Kiribati	250,000	170,000	80,000
Lao People’s Democratic Republic	250,000	170,000	80,000
Latvia	250,000	170,000	80,000
Lesotho	250,000	170,000	80,000
Liberia	250,000	170,000	80,000
Liechtenstein	250,000	170,000	80,000
Lithuania	250,000	170,000	80,000
Luxembourg	290,000	280,000	10,000
Macao	250,000	170,000	80,000
Macedonia	250,000	170,000	80,000
Madagascar	250,000	170,000	80,000
Malawi	250,000	170,000	80,000
Malta	250,000	170,000	80,000
Marshall Islands	250,000	170,000	80,000
Martinique	300,000	290,000	10,000
Mauritius	250,000	170,000	80,000
Mayotte	250,000	170,000	80,000
Mexico	290,000	290,000	-
Moldova	250,000	170,000	80,000
Monaco	250,000	170,000	80,000
Mongolia	250,000	170,000	80,000
Montenegro	250,000	170,000	80,000
Montserrat	250,000	170,000	80,000
Mozambique	250,000	170,000	80,000
Myanmar	240,000	160,000	80,000
Namibia	240,000	160,000	80,000
Nauru	250,000	170,000	80,000
Nepal	250,000	170,000	80,000
Netherlands	290,000	290,000	-
Netherlands Antilles	300,000	280,000	20,000
New Caledonia	250,000	170,000	80,000
Nicaragua	260,000	180,000	80,000
Niue	250,000	170,000	80,000
Norfolk Island	240,000	170,000	70,000
Northern Mariana Islands	260,000	180,000	80,000
Norway	290,000	280,000	10,000
Palau	250,000	170,000	80,000
Panama	260,000	180,000	80,000
Papua New Guinea	250,000	170,000	80,000
Paraguay	260,000	180,000	80,000
Peru	300,000	290,000	10,000
Philippines	290,000	290,000	-
Poland	290,000	280,000	10,000
Portugal	290,000	280,000	10,000
Puerto Rico	260,000	180,000	80,000
Reunion	250,000	170,000	80,000
Romania	250,000	170,000	80,000
Russia	290,000	280,000	10,000
Rwanda	250,000	170,000	80,000
Saint Kitts and Nevis	250,000	170,000	80,000
Saint Lucia	250,000	170,000	80,000
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	250,000	170,000	80,000
Samoa	250,000	170,000	80,000
San Marino	250,000	170,000	80,000
Sao Tome and Principe	250,000	170,000	80,000
Serbia	240,000	170,000	70,000
Seychelles	250,000	170,000	80,000
Slovakia	240,000	170,000	70,000
Slovenia	250,000	170,000	80,000
Solomon Islands	250,000	170,000	80,000
South Africa	240,000	160,000	80,000
Spain	290,000	280,000	10,000
Sri Lanka	250,000	170,000	80,000
Suriname	260,000	180,000	80,000
Swaziland	250,000	170,000	80,000
Sweden	290,000	280,000	10,000
Switzerland	290,000	280,000	10,000
Taiwan	290,000	280,000	10,000
Tanzania	250,000	170,000	80,000
Timor-Leste	250,000	170,000	80,000
Togo	250,000	170,000	80,000
Tonga	250,000	170,000	80,000
Trinidad and Tobago	300,000	290,000	10,000
Turks and Caicos Islands	260,000	180,000	80,000
Tuvalu	250,000	170,000	80,000
Uganda	250,000	170,000	80,000
Ukraine	250,000	170,000	80,000
United Kingdom	280,000	280,000	-
Uruguay	260,000	180,000	80,000
Vanuatu	250,000	170,000	80,000
Venezuela	260,000	180,000	80,000
Viet Nam	290,000	280,000	10,000
Virgin Islands, British	290,000	280,000	10,000
Virgin Islands, U.S.	260,000	180,000	80,000
Wallis and Futuna	250,000	170,000	80,000
Zambia	240,000	160,000	80,000
Zimbabwe	240,000	160,000	80,000

….

October 8, 2009 -- International Kindle FAQ (12)
October 6, 2009 -- Amazon geographical restrictions for Kindle Books update (9)
October 4, 2009 -- Amazon may be blocking non-US customers from buying Kindle books (27)

Kindle International Coverage Update

Andrei Pushkin — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 11:55:06 +0000

Since I published the Kindle International Coverage table it already became outdated as Amazon has made roughly 10,000 books available to several countries. I have updated and table now. I’ll make another check on the 19th when Kindle 2 international ships and then I’ll post updates on a weekly basis.

Here is the summary of changes:

Bolivia from 180,000 to 190,000
Botswana from 170,000 to 180,000
Bouvet Island from 170,000 to 180,000
Cocos (Keeling) Islands from 170,000 to 180,000
Ecuador from 180,000 to 190,000
El Salvador from 180,000 to 190,000
French Guiana from 180,000 to 190,000
Greenland from 180,000 to 190,000
Guatemala from 180,000 to 190,000
Haiti from 180,000 to 190,000
Honduras from 180,000 to 190,000
Jamaica from 290,000 to 300,000
Mayotte from 170,000 to 180,000
New Caledonia from 170,000 to 180,000
Nicaragua from 180,000 to 190,000
Northern Mariana Islands from 180,000 to 190,000
Palau from 170,000 to 180,000
Panama from 180,000 to 190,000
Papua New Guinea from 170,000 to 180,000
Paraguay from 180,000 to 190,000
Reunion from 170,000 to 180,000
Suriname from 180,000 to 190,000
Trinidad and Tobago from 290,000 to 300,000
Uruguay from 180,000 to 190,000
Venezuela from 180,000 to 190,000
Wallis and Futuna from 170,000 to 180,000

When Kindle International was originally annouced several many people complained that book selection that is available outside of the US is inferior to what is available to American customers. I guess Amazon is well aware of the problem and are working on negotiating more deals with local and international publishers to expand the eBook selection.

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September 2009 Summary

Andrei Pushkin — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 11:00:39 +0000

There were some oddities with Kindle content count in the month of September. Just look at these graphs below…

Kindle book count was steadily increasing at 280 books per day for the entire month and Kindle store was about to post a gain of 8K+ books for the month when on the last day there was a sudden drop of 15,245 books. So final monthly delta ended up being -7,131 books with average loss of 238 books per day. I’ve checked today and the numbers are still way down, so it wasn’t a one day thing. So the final count is 342,479. This is about as many books as there were in the beginning of August.

Kindle Book Count for September 2009

Similar sharp drop happened in Kindle Blogs on the 5th of September. 222 blogs were eliminated from the marketplace. If we disregard this drop, number of blogs was increasing at around 10 new blogs per day which is still fewer than August gains. However with this drop factored the number of blogs increased by only 8. By the way, BlogKindle is still there on the marketplace and you can subscribe to it using your Kindle.

Kindle Blog Count for September 2009

Perhaps Amazon decided to do some house cleaning and eliminate low quality and duplicate content. Perhaps they have made the admission rules more strict. This seems to contrast with Sony/Google strategy of piling in as much public domain content (which is mainly low quality or outdated) to impress customers with raw book numbers.

And finally, here’s a recoup of what happened in the month of September:

3rd of September: Kindle 2.0.4 and Kindle DX 2.1.1 software is released but it takes some time for these updates to actually get to the customers. For example my Kindle DX is still at software version 2.1…
4th of September: Hacked Kindle running Ubuntu is demonstrated. Kudos to Jesse.
5th of September: Saga about deletion of 1984 by Amazon has found closure.
10th of September: I’ve purchased Sony PRS-505 for my Dad and posted a mini-comparison of Sony PRS-505 vs. Kindle 2.
15th of September: Some rumors have leaked about Time Inc. eReader possible in the future.
17th of September: Probably the biggest Kindle news of the month: price drop on refurbished Kindles. $149 for first generation Kindle and $219 for Kindle 2.
19th of September: Kindle version of The Lost Symbol is outselling the hardcover on Amazon.
22nd of September: Amazon launches AmazonBasics.
23rd of September: I’ve posted a summary of what other reviewers are saying on Sony Reader Touch/Pocket vs. Kindle. My own Sony Reader Touch edition is on the way so you can expect a hands on review soon.
24th of September: techflash.com posted a great picture that shows all connections and entanglements between different companies related to eBook industry.
25th of September: …and this picture becomes outdated on the very next day as Verizon enters the arena as 3G provider for iRex.
27th of September: BestBuy will Sell Sony and iRex eReaders. This looks like a serious threat to Amazon that continues to ignore retail channels other than their own website. It really baffles me why are they doing it. I still think that selling Kindles in airports will make a killing.
29th of September: inductive charging comes to Kindle. Though it is still not as good as it can be.
30th of September: Microsoft unveils their Tablet PC.

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August 2009 Summary

Andrei Pushkin — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 11:45:41 +0000

It’s time to publish previous month stats and summaries again.

Kindle book count had several ups and downs during the month of August, finally settling at 349,610 (just 390 books shy of 350K) for an overall increase of 13,713 that translates to 442 books per day on average. This is 3 times lower than previous month gain, in fact this is the slowest growth I’ve observed since I’ve started counting Kindle books this year. I hope Amazon will pick up it’s pace or my book count predictions might be off. If I were to speculate, I would guess that Amazon is periodically prunning self-published books to avoid incidents similar to the one with Orwell books.

Kindle Book Count August 2009

Kindle blogs, on the other hand, saw a healthy increase of 807 (almost twice as many as in July) ending at 7,171. This is 26 new blogs per day on average. Although if you look at the chart you can see that majority of the blogs were added on the 12th. If I were to speculate again I would guess that Amazon was holding off on approving blogs until they’ve internally decided on some kind of policy. Either that ot they’ve struck some kind of wholesale deal with some blog mogul.

Kindle Blog Count August 2009

And now a brief recoup of August 2009 Kindle news:

August 2nd: Deletion of Orwell books lead to a lawsuit.
August 3rd: Barnes and Noble made their eReader software available for download.
August 5th: New Sony eReaders were announced.
August 7th: After being sold out for nearly a month, Kindle DX is back in stock.
August 8th: Rupert Murdoch, being dissatisfied with publishing deal with Amazon threatened to pull WJS and The Times from Kindle.
August 9th: A poll I conducted showed that many Kindle users are interested in Kindle downloader application. However I’m still waiting for final OK from Amazon on this matter.
August 13th: New iRex eReader was announced.
August 21st: Some interesting data about Kindle-related carbon emmissions and lack thereof.
August 22nd: eBook Text Formatter is published. It makes downloading books from web-sites such as lib.ru easier. It also works with Sony PRS eReaders.
August 27th: Someone was able to mod Kindle to replace CDMA modem with GSM so it can be used in Europe. However software mod needed to make this happen is still in the works.
August 28th: iRex Barnes and Noble integration announced.
August 30th: Asus announced plans to release it’s own Asus eReader.

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July 2009 Summary

Andrei Pushkin — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 13:47:24 +0000

It took me a bit longer than usual to come up with the summary but here goes…

Kindle book count increased 41,016 (13.8%) in the month of July with final count being 335,897. Notice odd fluctuations between the 9th and 14th. Perhaps some publisher couldn’t make up their mind… Besides that book growth was linear at about 1,300 books per day.

Kindle Book Count July 2009

As for Kindle blogs, there were 445 (7.5%) new blogs in July with final count being 6,364. It looks like bloggers are loosing interest in Amazon Kindle as publishing blog platform. The growth was linear with a rate of 14 new blogs per day. As for BlogKindle.com, it more than doubled its number of Kindle subscribers.

Kindle Blog Count July 2009

Since there were no major changes in subject disstibution compared to June 2009, I’m going to skip these charts this month.

Here’s a scoop of what happened in July 2009:

Kindle 2 price drop was probably the most important event in Kindle ecosystem last month. The fact that Amazon now sells eBook reader for under $300 is a big deal for many customers who were sitting on the fence.
A very close runner up would the the story about Amazon remotely deleting books from customer’s devices due to the fact that it was self-published on Amazon illegally and developements that followed including possible class-action law suit.
Speaking of law suits… Amazon agreed to replace Kindles damaged by leather covers as a result of law suit. Arizona state university was being sued for intentions to use Kindle in educational process because of accessibility issues.
An interesting hack was released for Kindle DX that allows direct PDF download to the device.
There were a lot of news related to Kindle competition. Many players are entering the market including: COOL-ER eReader, weFound, Barnes & Noble along with PlasticLogic, Samsung and Google.
However Amazon doesn’t sit idly either. Kindle is getting adopted by such companies as MicroStrategy and BlackBoard. Kindle and eReaders in general are being recognized as increasing influence by USA Today and Credit Suisse. There are also plans to expand Amazon Kindle Store to new devices.
There were also some news about upcoming UK release of Kindle. It will be interesting to see how it will play out. I’m currently in the UK and while I was reading Kindle in public places here not once was I asked about the device contrasting with US where I get asked about what is that device that I use for reading quite often. Perhaps it has something to do with British people not talking to strangers without being properly introduced :)

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June 2009 Summary

Andrei Pushkin — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 21:06:04 +0000

There were 294,881 books at the end of May 2009 and 312,591 books at the end of June 2009. So 17,710 books were added to Kindle Book Store during June. This is slightly more than 6%. On average 590 books were added per day. This is less than average of 641 books per day during the month of May.

Kindle Book Count June 2009

Here’s breakdown by categories:

Kindle Book Categories June 2009

Category	9-May	9-Jun	Change
Advice & How-to	20,939	22,223	1,284
Arts & Entertainment	9,505	12,935	3,430
Biographies & Memoirs	11,210	12,071	861
Business & Investing	26,512	27,590	1,078
Children’s Chapter Books	10,354	11,704	1,350
Computers & Internet	13,285	13,749	464
Cooking, Food & Wine	3,050	3,288	238
Fantasy	5,058	5,359	301
Fiction	116,551	118,788	2,237
General	1,858	1,919	61
History	20,957	22,417	1,460
Humor	5,865	6,473	608
Lifestyle & Home	14,094	15,137	1,043
Literary Fiction	9,213	10,198	985
Mystery & Thrillers	13,022	13,909	887
Nonfiction	176,142	187,781	11,639
Parenting & Families	5,807	6,217	410
Politics & Current Events	11,478	11,797	319
Reference	10,147	10,655	508
Religion & Spirituality	24,609	26,218	1,609
Romance	16,105	17,139	1,034
Science	36,497	37,332	835
Science Fiction	6,984	7,474	490
Sports	3,992	4,259	267
Travel	3,475	3,876	401

There were 5,368 blogs to begin with and 5,919 at the end of June. This corresponds to +10% or 18 new blogs on average per day. It’s not as impressive as +286% in the previous month when Kindle Blog publishing became available to everyone but still it is a nice number.

Kindle Blog Count June 2009

Here’s breakdown by categories:

Kindle Blog Categories June 2009

Category	May-09	Jun-09	Change
Arts & Entertainment	1,295	1,480	185
Business & Investing	952	1,061	109
Humor & Satire	492	574	82
Industry Focus	777	849	72
Internet & Technology	1,718	1,889	171
Lifestyle & Culture	1,925	2,216	291
News, Politics & Opinion	1,132	1,283	151
Regional & Travel	378	426	48
Science	326	362	36
Sports	565	610	45

In the month of June BlogKindle.com truly lived up to it’s tagline of “daily news about Kindle, eBooks, eInk and other related topics”. There was a post every day and I hope that you’ve enjoyed most of them. Here’s a brief summary:

June 1st – Amazon announced Kindle DX release date.
June 2nd – Google announced its intentions to open digital book store by the end of 2009.
June 5th – scratched my Kindle 2 :(
June 5th – Kindle store hits 300k books.
June 7th and 27th – Kindle used by libraries more and more.
June 10th – Kindle DX ships.
June 11th – California governor announces digital textbook initiative for high schools.
June 11th – my first Kindle DX review.
June 13th – I accidentally stumble over calculator easter egg in Kindle DX.
June 14th – PDF support in Kindle DX reviewed.
June 15th – Kindle DX dissected.
June 18th – Kindle DX compared to Kindle 2.
June 21th – unicode hack now works for Kindle DX.
June 22nd – screensaver hack ported to Kindle DX.
June 30th – both my Kindles survive airplane trip this time.
June 30th – after 20 days of sales Kindle DX is sold out.

Category	May-09	Jun-09	Change
Arts & Entertainment	1,295	1,480	185
Business & Investing	952	1,061	109
Humor & Satire	492	574	82
Industry Focus	777	849	72
Internet & Technology	1,718	1,889	171
Lifestyle & Culture	1,925	2,216	291
News, Politics & Opinion	1,132	1,283	151
Regional & Travel	378	426	48
Science	326	362	36
Sports	565	610	45

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300,000+ books in the Kindle Store

Andrei Pushkin — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 13:42:00 +0000

I just noticed that as of 5th of June, 2009 Kindle store surpassed 300,000 books. I was about to brag about how close my prediction was when I noticed that I made a typo when I was typing that post one month ago. I meant to write 13th of June but from July. Seriously…

Anyway, this is 8 days ahead of my mistyped prediction…

December 14, 2011 -- Amazon Addressing Kindle Fire Criticisms In Upcoming Update (0)

May 2009 Summary

Andrei Pushkin — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 13:30:51 +0000

During May 19,885 new books were added to the Kindle Store with 294,881 books at the end of the month. This corresponds to 7.23% growth.

Kindle Book Count May 2009

Here is break down by categories:

Kindle Book Categories, May 2009

Category	Apr-09	May-09	Change
Advice & How-to	19,393	20,939	1,546
Arts & Entertainment	8,749	9,505	756
Biographies & Memoirs	9,833	11,210	1,377
Business & Investing	24,938	26,512	1,574
Children’s Chapter Books	9,191	10,354	1,163
Computers & Internet	12,710	13,285	575
Cooking, Food & Wine	-	3,050	3,050
Fantasy	4,618	5,058	440
Fiction	108,465	116,551	8,086
General	1,752	1,858	106
History	19,297	20,957	1,660
Humor	4,673	5,865	1,192
Lifestyle & Home	12,871	14,094	1,223
Literary Fiction	8,133	9,213	1,080
Mystery & Thrillers	12,231	13,022	791
Nonfiction	165,236	176,142	10,906
Parenting & Families	5,322	5,807	485
Politics & Current Events	11,187	11,478	291
Reference	9,557	10,147	590
Religion & Spirituality	22,608	24,609	2,001
Romance	15,078	16,105	1,027
Science	35,746	36,497	751
Science Fiction	6,570	6,984	414
Sports	3,587	3,992	405
Travel	3,124	3,475	351

While I didn’t track number of blogs initially, at the end of the month it was 5,368. Up almost 4k from estimated initial count of 1,4k +286%

Kindle Blog Count, May 2009

Here is break down by categories:

Kindle Blog Categories, May 2009

Category	Count
Arts & Entertainment	1,295
Business & Investing	952
Humor & Satire	492
Industry Focus	777
Internet & Technology	1,718
Lifestyle & Culture	1,925
News, Politics & Opinion	1,132
Regional & Travel	378
Science	326
Sports	565

Here’s brief recoup of the blog for the previous month:

May 6th – Kindle DX is announced and Amazon starts taking pre-orders…
May 15th – Wooden Kindle replica is constructed by folks at “Incredible Stuff I Made” and then burned…
May 18th – BlogKindle.com is published on Kindle store for $1.99/month, on May 26th the price is decreased to $0.99/month.
May 20th – Kindle for iPhone is updated with new features taking advantage of multi-touch and accelerometer.
May 21st – BlogKindle.com undergoes a major redesign.
May 22nd – Amazon sues Discovery Communications.
May 26th – Kindle Economics category is opened with the first post being about wireless data pricing for Amazon and Kindle subscribers.
May 27th – Amazon makes Kindle notes and highlights available for viewing online. However this feature needs much improvement before it becomes useful.
May 28th – Plastic Logic demoed their eReader on All Things D.
May 29th – Kindle DX release date contest was launched and BlogKindle starts tweeting.
May 31st – Pixel Qi demonstrates hybrid reflective/backlit display.

“Good Kindle Books at a Glance” covered Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Frank Herbert, H.G. Wells and Douglas Adams…

I hope you enjoyed reading this blog as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it :)

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Kindle Book Count – March & April 2009

Andrei Pushkin — Tue, 12 May 2009 19:08:37 +0000

I’ve been counting books in Kindle Store on a daily basis and now the time to share results:

When I first started counting on the 2nd of March 2009 there were 242,488 books in the Kindle Store.
As of the 12th of May 2009 there are 281,986. 39,498 books in 71 days.
So on an average day 556 new books are added to the vast collection already available to Kindle owners.
If the pace remains constant there will be 411,606 books in the Kindle Store by the end of the year.
Target of 300,000 books is estimated to be hit on the 13th of July June, 2009
Target of 400,000 books is estimated to be hit on the 10th of December, 2009

Lets wait and see how accurate these predictions will be. So far as you can see from the chart below the pace has been quite constant

If you are interested in what kind of books are these take a look at the next chart (click to zoom in)

If you add up the numbers you’ll notice that the sum is more than 281k. This is because there usually one book belongs to more than one category.

I’ll make a habit of posting these statistics every month.

May 4, 2010 -- Kindle Books from March 2009 to May 2010 (3)

Amazon Kindle 3 and Kindle DX Review and News With Fire and Special Touch... » Kindle Book Count

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