Kindle

The Kindle 3 is now on sale - and with the cheapest model selling for just $139, sales are brisk. Amazon say it's the fastest-selling model yet...but they won't release any figures:

It's in Amazon's best interest to keep Kindle sales details under wraps, said Michael Norris of Simba Information, a research firm that covers the media and publishing industries.

"They can keep this perception of being the market leader without releasing the details," Norris said. "It's interesting to sit through Amazon earnings calls and nobody pushes for Kindle details. It's as if people are trained not to ask."

..."This kind of message management is beyond normal corporate public relations. And now I've gotten so used to it that I'm becoming suspicious of any stats they release."

With enhancements to the Kobo, the release of the Samsung eReader, and the continuing success of the iPad, Amazon look to have done well getting this new, cheaper and more lightweight Kindle version out on the market at this time.

Amazon and Apple are under investigation by a US attorney general over the pricing of eBooks. Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal revealed late yesterday he was looking into agreements about the sale of e-books that "may block competitors from offering cheaper e-book prices", saying they "appear to deter certain publishers from offering discounts to Amazon and Apple’s competitors - because they must offer the same to Amazon and Apple". According to Blumenthal:

These agreements among publishers, Amazon and Apple appear to have already resulted in uniform prices for many of the most popular e-books - potentially depriving consumers of competitive prices.

The e-book market is set to explode - with analysts predicting that e-book readers will be among the holiday season’s biggest electronic gifts - warranting prompt review of the potential anti-consumer impacts.

Amazon and Apple combined will likely command the greatest share of the retail e-book market, allowing their most-favored-nation clauses to effectively set the floor prices for the most popular e-books. Such agreements - especially when offered to two of the largest e-book retail competitors in the United States - threaten to encourage coordinated pricing and discourage discounting.

Full story at The Bookseller.

With a price war developing between eReader devices (Barnes and Noble's Nook can now be purchased for just $US149), and the iPad making significant inroads into the market as well, Amazon have gone on the attack by announcing significantly cheaper Kindles - including a WiFi only version for just $US139:

The new Kindle features a screen with increased gray-scale contrast, a battery that lasts for a month, and a slightly smaller size. It will come in two flavors: one with Wi-Fi and 3G Internet connections selling for $189, the other with Wi-Fi only for $139. The latter will be among the cheapest wireless-equipped e-readers on the market, at least for now.

"We developed this device for serious readers. At these price points, it may be much broader than that," said Mr. Bezos in an interview. "People will buy them for their kids. People won't share Kindles any more." Amazon will begin taking orders Thursday and the new models will begin shipping Aug. 27 to customers in 140 countries.

The new models and pricing seem aimed primarily at undercutting other comparable devices such as the Nook, rather than taking on the iPad. In the words of Jeff Bezos, "adding video and animation is not going to be helpful. It is distracting rather than enhancing. You are not going to improve Hemingway by adding video snippets."

Here's Bezos on Charlie Rose explaining further:

Read more »

On Monday Amazon announced that over the last 3 months, sales of Kindle books had outstripped those of hardcover books on the bookselling behemoth's website (and that's not even counting free eBooks):

In that time, Amazon said, it sold 143 Kindle books for every 100 hardcover books, including hardcovers for which there is no Kindle edition.

The pace of change is quickening, too, Amazon said. In the last four weeks sales rose to 180 digital books for every 100 hardcover copies. Amazon has 630,000 Kindle books, a small fraction of the millions of books sold on the site

Amazon's reticence to release hard figures has some questioning the statement though, or at least wondering what the figures actually mean given price disparity and books available.

Nevertheless, one interesting point is that Amazon's eBook sales have continued to grow since the release of the iPad, suggesting that while the device may be some sort of rival to the Kindle, it does just offer a new market for Amazon's eBooks (via the Kindle for iPad app).

Is Amazon likely to fight the iPad incursion into eBook territory by doubling the amount of screens? According to this report, they have just been granted their patent on an eReader which sounds like a large-scale version of the Nintendo DS - here's info from the patent application:

A handheld electronic book reader device is equipped with dual displays. The device includes a first display for presenting visible representations of textual or graphic content related to the electronic book. The device also includes a second display positioned alongside the first display. The second display includes a plurality of graphic elements that correspond to portions of the first display.

...Also, the second display is responsive to user input to one of the graphic elements to perform an action on the content that is shown in the portion of the first display that corresponds to the one element.

It might be telling though that the application was first filed in 2006...and given the speed at which the eReader sector is evolving, this design may well be obsolete already.

In an interview with Fortune, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos says that Amazon's Kindle stands on its own merits as an e-reading device, despite the onslaught of Apple's iPad. In addition, Bezos continued to exert pressure on publishers when it comes to eBook pricing:

First of all, there are a bunch of publishers of all sizes, and they don't all have one opinion. There are as many opinions about what the right thing to do is as there are publishers. So you're seeing that some of them are being very aggressive on prices, pricing their books well below $9.99. Others are trying to do everything they can to make prices as high as possible. And what you're going to see is a share shift from one group of publishers to this other group of publishers.

Who would that other group of publishers be...?