Something about this story bugs me. Maybe its the bare facts, $46 Mil vs $1260 Mil which is about 3% of the total market volume putting eBooks around nuisance value. If you look at the $46M it also includes $22M for one title alone, the ubiquitous Dan Brown so the claim
that eBooks have sold like hotcakes without a marketing or sales strategy
seems a little overblown. Another way of looking at the result is to say that Random House are doing the world’s trees a favour by selling that many versions of The Lost Symbol as eBooks. It also means they are less likely to be cluttering up the second hand market after December.
But given the financial success of TLS and this line about how
eBooks are more profitable than print because there is no physical inventory, and in many cases the publisher has negotiated lower royalty payments
you might be inclined to think this is just another face of innovation driven by corporate greed.
I think when the eBook reader comes out that is 100% recyclable and does not hook the reader into a interconnected corporate web with ongoing consumption and as an added bonus allows for spontaneous media sharing then you might have something that comes close to a good book. It seems like 98.5% of the market agrees…the 1.5% who buy Dan Brown obviously don’t count.
If eBooks Are the Future, Do Publishers Have a Plan? | All Up in Your Business | Fast Company.
I am surprised at how easy it is to operate my Kindle.
I still smile at being able to set it down to deal with life’s little issues and not worry about finding my page again. I no longer worry about setting my book upside down to hold my page and ruining the spine when I go to answer the phone. I can set the Kindle down and do what I need to do then come back to my page.
If I have to leave the Kindle sitting idle for an extended period of time it shuts itself off to save on battery life so all I have to do when I come back is turn it on and there is the page I was reading.
And navigating is very easy as well. I actually enjoy browsing all the different books in the Kindle store and searching books by type, title or author.
As they say “good things come in small packages”, well this is one GREAT small package. The Kindle solves my problem of saving space and weight in an RV. Now I have my library in a small package that weighs just over 10 ounces!
Thank you for such a smart and useful product.
Nice comments on the Kindle, sounds a bit like a sales pitch to me which makes me wonder if there is a little industry in seeking out blog posts about stuff and responding with promotional posts. So a review that might approach something like a Kindle from one angle can be “balanced” by the blog replies. Would people get paid for that?
hahaha the end is so cool 5 stars