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: Stephen's Lighthouse

Obligatory Kindle Post

We don't have Kindles in Canada. Stupid I know. We don't get Hulu or Pandora too (withut hacking).

Anyway, here are some links.

TechCrunch The Big Kindle Revealed

TechCrunch: For Books Available On Kindle, Sales Are Now Tracking At 35 Percent Of Print Sales

CrunchGear: Hands-On Kindle DX

TechCrunch: Hands-on Kindle DX [Update]

Lots more pictures and commentary behind the links.

And if you want some library soundbites:

The Kindle DX will list at $489.00 US. That'll last as long as the early adopter fanboys are buying enough.

How big is it (I assume that's a normal sized hand and not like those sea monkeys in comic books!):

How much do Kindle sales represent of print sales?

More than I thought!

Bexos said that "The Kindle vision is every book ever printed available in 60 seconds. 18 months ago launched with 90K books, 200K books with launch of Kindle 2, added another 45K books. Where we have Kindle editions, Kindle is now 35% of books sold for those titles. It took us 14 years to build up our physical books business. We find this very encouraging.

["The 35 percent refers to the number of titles or units sold, not revenues, and is indeed additive. So let?s take the example above again. If 10,000 copies of a book are sold in physical form, and another 3,500 in digital form that is a total of 13,500 copies sold. The Kindle portion selling at 35 percent the rate of physical titles, but represents 26 percent of the total. ... So let?s take this new number, 26 percent, and apply it to my assumptions above. At 80 percent of sales, instead of $280 million a quarter, it would be $208 million (26% of $800M). At 50 percent, it would be $130 million (26% of $500M)." And that's just comparing Amazon sales - you can buy books in other places too!]

Bezos introduces the Kindle DX, built in PDF reader. No zooming, no panning, just read. shows off cookbooks, a picture of Sushi doesn?t look too appetizing in gray-scale, however, atlases, and textbooks."

Who are the partners?

Bezos announced a partnership with three top textbook publishers which account for 60% of textbook sales (Pearson, Wiley and Cengage Learning).

6 universities have agreed to pilot Arizona State, Princeton, Reed, University of Virginia, Case Western Reserve and Pace University.

"Newspapers have been popular. This summer 3 newspapers have agreed to pilot Kindle DX for a reduced price in return for long term commitments for subscriptions, NYT, Washington Post and Boston Globe. But only for people who live in places where local delivery is not available.

The DX goal is newspapers, maps and textbooks. Hmmmm.

It's a sea change that promises some real action. Amazon is still coy and confused about how libraries can use the Kindle. Sad.

Stephen

Full post as published by Stephen's Lighthouse on May 06, 2009 (boomark / email).