bookpublishing

Today is the birthday of Amazon’s Kindle, which appeared on the scene one year ago and is one of the most popular e-readers. CNN reports on the Kindle today in a somewhat amusing and confusing article that leads me to believe they are guessing as hard as the rest of us are about the effectiveness of the Kindle.

Despite claiming that “exact sales figures are hard to come by,” CNN projects that the Kindle has sold more than a quarter million units. You sure CNN? Where did you get that info? Amazon? Are they suddenly talking about Kindle sales? If so, was it a struggle to get them to fess up? Sounds to me, like some others whose blog posts were listed on the CNN article (how cool is that??), that they’re taking a big old guesstimate on that figure.

The article doesn’t tell us much that is new, mostly repeating quotes from avid readers who enjoy the weight of a paperback in their hands and customers frustrated by the lofty price tag of the device ($359). I didn’t realize that “Blockbuster writers such as J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, have said they’ll never allow their books to appear on the market in electronic form.” But of course, authors like Rowling have enough money. God forbid they keep reading alive in any and all formats. … Ok I won’t go there.

Other “news”: “A next-generation model of the Kindle is due in 2009. Early reports indicate the new device will be thinner and will have fixed some current design bugs, such as poorly placed buttons that cause readers to turn pages accidentally.” Nothing we haven’t heard: The updated device won’t address many of the biggest concerns I’ve spoken about in other Kindle posts.

I still don’t doubt that the Kindle will become more and more popular and eventually become as mainstream as the Blackberry… that is unless Blackberrys continue to outperform e-reader devices.

(For those looking for my monthly top Entrecard droppers post, it’s coming! Sorry for the wait!)

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