How Many Kindle Books Sold Per Day?

[Kingston]

Don't quite know how he arrived at his numbers but this
fellow estimates it at 4-5000/day. Pretty impressive given that there
seem to be so few Kindles yet in the field.

http://www.munseys.com/technosnarl/?p=109

[astra]

Just out of curiosity

Are you working for Amazon?
During the last couple of weeks I have noticed you are starting new topics that suggest how good Kindle is

[Kingston]

Originally Posted by astra_lestat

Just out of curiosity

Are you working for Amazon?
During the last couple of weeks I have noticed you are starting new topics that suggest how good Kindle is

Interesting that your comments said nothing to address the topic of my post but instead take an ad hominem slant.

A similar comment was made here by another poster (unless that was you in another guise) http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20172616_2,00.html

I have no connection to Amazon. I am a retired physician, retired at a too young age (59) by cancer with suddenly a lot of free time to kill. There is something about the ugly white slab of plastic which inspires love--or maybe just strong like. Your Sony Reader will win beauty contest trophies and marry the quarterback, but my ugly little boy Kindle is going to gain mass acceptance, unlike the Sony.

If someone other than Amazon releases a better ebook reader I will be the first to drop the Kindle for a better reader.

There's not a lot of activity here in the Kindle forum at least compared to the Sony and Irex forums. I've been trying to put up stuff that Kindle owners might find of interest. If you want to shoot me down for that, then hey, go for it. You're the old guy here and I'm the newbie.

I guess I could ask you if you work for Sony since you have an affinity for your Reader but that would be silly of me.

Having given you my bio, will you now give me yours?

[astra]

Kingston

A similar comment was made here by another poster (unless that was you in another guise)

Not me. I did comment on website with Kindle vs. Sony PRS-500 review though.

my ugly little boy Kindle is going to gain mass acceptance, unlike the Sony

I am afraid you are probably right.

There's not a lot of activity here in the Kindle forum at least compared to the Sony and Irex forums.

Are you serious? Kindle forum has less activity than iRex iLiad?? Are you sure? I wish it was true

You're the old guy here and I'm the newbie

Number of posts doesn't make one wise, on the other hand it might be a sign of a troll....

I guess I could ask you if you work for Sony since you have an affinity for your Reader but that would be silly of me.

True, considering I live in the UK where Sony doesn't deign to sell the reader.

Having given you my bio, will you now give me yours?

Nah. I prefer to cowardly hide behind the Internet curtain of anonymity

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by Kingston

Don't quite know how he arrived at his numbers but this
fellow estimates it at 4-5000/day. Pretty impressive given that there
seem to be so few Kindles yet in the field.

He appears to base it on his following of the sales status of a single title and extrapolating. He has made these kinds of projections before (not in regard to the Kindle but as to other matters) and has yet to be correct.

I have no idea how many ebooks are being sold daily for the Kindle, but trade papers seem to think that the production run for the Kindle was 50,000 units. Assuming all units have been sold, it would require 10% of buyers to buy a book a day, or every Kindle owner to buy 1 book every 10 days for the guesstimate to be accurate. I think that is contrary real expectations, even allowing for single buyers to make multiple purchases.

The other question -- that is, the one not yet raised but to me the more interesting one -- is assuming these numbers are correct, will the sales volume hold up (a) after the novelty of the Kindle has worn off and (b) after Amazon raises prices from the $9.99 mark. One must always keep in mind how the publishing industry works and that Amazon must make a profit at some point. I can't address the latter, but the former I can.

Generally a publisher "sells" a book at a 40-50% discount off list. If to a distributor, then the distributor keeps a percentage and what remains is for the retailer. Amazon probably gets the discount directly because of sales volume and because it acts as its own closed distributor. What it means is that Amazon is losing money on most bestsellers it sells at $9.99.

The unknown is whether book publishers are giving a steeper discount to Amazon for the ebook version, but from my years in the industry (25 of them), I'd say it was unlikely that the big publishers are; their financials are not in good enough shape.

So what will happen when $9.99 no longer gets you a bestseller? What will happen when Kindle users discover that they are paying $1.99 for books they can get for free elsewhere?

Even though I turned down a Kindle for Christmas, holding out for the Sony (which my family gave me and I have enjoyed ever since, 'lo these few weeks), I hope sales of Kindle ebooks are good. It would encourage publishers to do more ebook publishing and might ultimately force a single publishing standard.

[Ervserver]

I don't know if its impressive or not without having true numbers on how many Kindles are out there. Munsey’s Technosnarl means nothing to me unless they can say how they came up with those figures

Originally Posted by Kingston

Don't quite know how he arrived at his numbers but this
fellow estimates it at 4-5000/day. Pretty impressive given that there
seem to be so few Kindles yet in the field.

http://www.munseys.com/technosnarl/?p=109

[tribble]

Since all of it is speculation, i would say i dont care as long there are no hard numbers.

[snookums]

Rhadin: Amazon sells their paper bestsellers at below cost as well to draw people into the store. They recoup the losses on all of their other books. It's the same business strategy they have been successfully using for paper books all these years. They may raise their prices for electronic bestsellers, but it's also possible that they may keep them at $9.99.

[wallcraft]

A teleread comment by Steve Pendergrast, of FictionWise, suggests that several e-book retailers have sales in the 4k-5k books a day range. These numbers are presumably firmer than the Amazon estimate.

Getting back to speculation, his estimate is 50K-100K Kindles in the 1st year and 3K-10K in the first shipment.

[lovebeta]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

A teleread comment by Steve Pendergrast, of FictionWise, suggests that several e-book retailers have sales in the 4k-5k books a day range. These numbers are presumably firmer than the Amazon estimate.

Getting back to speculation, his estimate is 50K-100K Kindles in the 1st year and 3K-10K in the first shipment.

I think Kindle can do better than this. Look at the 1559 reviews about the kindle on Amazon. Despite that many of the reviews came from the haters, there are still quite a lot owners. The next question is: what's the percentage of kindle owners who would bother to leave a review?

I think the early adopter are vocal for sure. But still... well I haven't leave my review on Amazon yet...