As Barnes & Noble starts shipping the Nook, Amazon boasts of Kindle sales
The holiday shopping season of 2009 may end up being remembered as “The War of the E-Readers” as Amazon and Barnes & Noble begin butting heads to grab the most attention.
We all knew this was going to be one of the most hotly debated subjects this holiday season, but I don’t know if we saw it as the battle that would rage across the media.
According to The Wall Street Journal (subscription required), Barnes & Noble has said that it will do everything it can to make sure that all orders for the Nook placed prior to Nov. 20 will be filled by Christmas. The selection of date cut off is due to when the book seller announced that orders from Nov. 20 on would ship in the first part of January 2010. Due to the number of Nooks that will need to be shipped, Barnes & Noble has announced that demo units will not go out to its retail locations until Dec. 7, and even then it will only be at select stores.
Meanwhile, Amazon released a press release today that informs everyone that even not counting today, November was the best month ever for sales of its Kindle e-reader. According to the online retailer, the “Kindle continues to be the most wished for, the most gifted, and the number one bestselling product across all product categories on Amazon.” What sort of sales that translates into is anyone’s guess as Amazon does not detail sales numbers, but how convenient that information came out on the first day of Barnes & Noble Nook shipments. Pure coincidence we’re sure.
Of course all these details of stellar sales don’t also have their detractors. Mike Elgan of Computerworld wrote a piece entitled “7 reasons why e-book readers make lousy gifts this year“, but we would say from all of these sales reports and notices of shortages, not too many people are listening.
Related Posts:
December 1st, 2009
I originally pre-ordered a nook. Then I tried browsing the B&N eBook store. Then I compared with Amazon. Then I canceled my nook order and ordered a Kindle instead. Perhaps that reaction is part of the reason that the Kindle had such a great month.