Kindle sets records at Amazon
The Kindle e-book reader from Amazon is cutting some new notches in its belt on the sales front, both in physical readers and via virtual books, and may be remaking an industry in the process.
The Kindle e-reader climbed to the top of the sales charts at Amazon this Christmas. In it’s annual report on holiday sales, one will find this quote from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos: “We are grateful to our customers for making Kindle the most gifted item ever in our history.” Given all that Amazon sells and how long they have been doing it, that it a very impressive statement.
There is some chance that the last-minute frenzy was caused, at least in part, by the on-again, off-again nature of shipping plans for the Barnes and Noble Nook e-reader, according to a CNET story. Still, the Kindle is the leader in e-reader sales anyway, so Amazon may not have needed a last-minute boost from Barnes and Noble. Perhaps more importantly, in any case, is that Amazon announced that, on Christmas Day 2009, for the very first time ever, customers at the Amazon site bought more Kindle books than physical books. Amazon didn’t offer specific numbers for either category.
Still, Amazon is generally acknowledged to be the premier seller of books in the U.S., if not the world, and the fact that they sold more virtual books than paper ones on Christmas is significant. Like many of us, I am an avid reader and love the feel of a hard-back book in my hands, and even the smell of its pages. I really, really don’t want to see them go the way of the buggy whip. Though I’m sure that will not happen in the near future, it is easy to see that physical books are rapidly losing ground to the virtual variety.
It is certainly possible to enjoy reading on an e-reader, and even an unintentional one: I find the iPhone Kindle app to be very handy, in that I am never without a book now. Although it would be preferable to have a physical paper book with me at all times, that can be a bit inconvenient, especially if one’s preference is hardbacks. The Kindle, nor the Nook, nor the prophesied Apple tablet will kill the physical books that we love immediately. Still, it would be nice to be able to carry hundreds or thousands of books in our pockets, and to stop using so much of our resources for non-virtual books.
The hardback paper book is probably doomed to much the same fate as the V8 Buick Roadmaster; in a world of dwindling resources, we probably will not be able to afford them forever. Like many of us, I will be deeply saddened as paper books continue to rise in price and become reduced in availability, all in favor of the electronic variety. Yet I fear that will be one of the prices we pay for our continuing questionable stewardship of our planet’s resources.
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