For the third consecutive year, at Digital Book World later this month, Jack McKeown from Verso Digital (and Books & Books Westhampton Beach) will present original consumer survey data and analysis on consumer habits regarding both ebooks and print books, from responses elicited from over 2,200 respondents after November’s “Cyber Monday.” By their results, ereader ownership could as much as double over the next year–6.4 percent of respondents are “very likely” to purchase, and another 9.9 percent are somewhat likely, with 15.8 percent of people saying they “already own” an reader. (That ownership percentage is roughly consistent with what Bowker […]
eReaders
eNews: Kindle Has “Best Holiday Ever”; 100K Xmas Downloads for Harper UK; and More
Restating the obvious and continuing its tradition of trumpeting nonspecific success, Amazon announced that 2011 “was the best holiday ever for the Kindle family as customers purchased millions of Kindle Fires and millions of Kindle e-readers,” while Christmas day was the “biggest day ever” for Kindle book downloads. Building on their earlier press release, they say that “throughout December, customers purchased well over 1 million Kindle devices per week.” Despite straining to celebrate and overplay the success of KDP authors, the etailer admits that the top ebooks for the holiday sales period were The Hunger Games and Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins […]
eNews: Kobo in Holland, UK Kindle Sales, and More
Kobo has soft-launched in the Netherlands, selling ebooks from Bruna, Querido and De Bezige Bij beginning December 17, at about a 10% discount compared to leading Dutch online bookseller Bol.com. They started selling their Kobo Touch ereaders via Dutch electronics retailer Redcoon as of October 1. Kobo’s official launch in Holland is expected by March 1, 2012. Amazon announced that Kindle device sales in the UK more than doubled during the Christmas holiday. As in the US, an unspecified “millions of UK customers have already discovered the benefits of Kindle.” Though the announcement came a little late for the holidays, Smashwords said […]
A Million Kindles A Week; BN Said to Increase Nook Orders; and More eNews
Yesterday Amazon issued a press release saying they are selling “well over 1 million Kindle devices per week…for the third week in a row,” across all of their Kindle readers. They answer recent criticism of their new tablet by saying “Kindle Fire sales increased week over week for each of the past three weeks.” While the company has put Kindle sales in the “millions” before, it’s the first time they have declared sales of more than a million units in a week. Separately, Digitimes has updated their supply chain reports on devices expected to be manufactured for Barnes & Nook. […]
We Didn’t Start the Fire…
After a premature wave of reports declaring the Kindle Fire a raging success before any consumers tried it, the press is now moving to the expected next phase of coverage: discovering the problems of a first-generation device. Today’s NYT has it both ways: Fire “is less than a blazing success with many of its early users” but “it would be foolish to underestimate Amazon.” Those poor early buyers “seem to have bought it on a mixture of faith and hype.” Gosh, where would that have come from? The news in the article is that, “in less than two weeks, [Amazon […]
eNews: Indiebound Reader App Launches; eBooks in Europe; and More
Indiebound has launched its ebook reading app, Indiebound Reader, in conjunction with Bluefire, as announced in August (and originally set for release in October). So far the app is only available for Android devices, but “it will soon be available” for iOS devices. Consistent with Apple’s revised rules, the iOS version will be for reading only, and will not include in-app purchasing. Indiebound Reader page At the same Reuters Global Media summit where Penguin ceo John Makinson spoke of “dark clouds” hovering over the publishing horizon in 2012, Hachette ceo Arnaud Nourry was more optimistic about the prospects for digital […]