TOP 100 BOOK SITES
| |||
|
| |||
| |||
|
| |||
| Essay: Is Technology Dumbing Down Japanese? E-mail and cellphone novels may be making the language easier — even for the Japanese. feeds.nytimes.com |
Arts, Briefly: Oxfam and Booksellers Agree to Plan According to The Guardian, representatives from Oxfam, the Provincial Booksellers Fairs Association and the Antiquarian Booksellers Association met to create a plan to help redirect business back to local secondhand booksellers. feeds.nytimes.com |
Random House Restructures Crown Publishing Jenny Frost, the president and publisher of Crown, will leave the company. feeds.nytimes.com |
Amazon says it was a Kindle Christmas - but still no sales figures To all intents and purposes, Amazon's continuing push into the electronic book market with the Kindle looks unstoppable. Its latest landmark? On Christmas Day, it said, Amazon.com sold more ebooks than paper ones for the first time ever. That well-timed announcement led to a number of glowing media reports.It's good for Amazon that ebook sales appear brisk, but the company still isn't releasing sales figures - which means it's actually a pretty meaningless comparison. Christmas Day, after all, is not peak shopping season, but when you get an empty Kindle from Santa, you're going to need to put some books on it. Without numbers, it's impossible to determine whether or not the Kindle is firing up bookworms - did its record-breaking day involve hundreds, thousands, millions of book sales? Who knows.This is exactly the sort of statistical massage I wrote about last week, in a piece that detailed the guessing game over the Kindle's sales figures and how Amazon cleverly chooses its phrasing to make it sound like the Kindle is everywhere. That may be the case, but when I asked whether readers had seen a Kindle in the wild, sightings, while encouraging, were not overwhelming:Andrys: "[on a recent trip], 4 of the other 10 travelers owned Kindles and 2 more (a couple) had tried to order them from Amazon hoping they'd arrive in Israel where they were at the time."simonsomething: "Never seen a Kindle, but have spotted a couple of Sony eReaders on planes."Reggaestar: "I have seen one on the train on my daily commute."dgsweet: "A recent subway ride in New York -- I was reading a Kindle and my wife was reading a Kindle. As we got off the train, a woman getting on was carrying hers."It's hardly surprising that a company chooses to show itself in the best possible light. Kindle sales may well be very strong indeed. But Amazon has always made a point of trying to appear straight and honest (Jeff Bezos's forthright apology over the 1984 debacle was one of the best I've seen, for example). Even Apple, the most secretive company I've dealt with, gives out sales figures.And don't forget: finding out how many Kindles are being sold isn't just about checking whether Amazon is telling us the truth. The fact is that the company's secrecy could also be hurting the wider development of electronic books. Forget all the fluffy press releases and "record-breaking" talk: if, after building up expectation so high, it suddenly becomes apparent that Kindle sales aren't as stratospheric as the company suggests then people might suddenly start getting cold feet. A publisher or manufacturer stung by the promise of some grand new Kindle-based success will think twice about diving into the ebook market again: something that could seriously impinge development.Releasing sales figures may be the easiest way for Amazon to manage expectations and calm a brewing backlash, fuelled by incidents such as major publisher Simon and Schuster putting the brakes on ebook releases, and e-paper manufacturers suggesting that "it is too early to tell whether the end users think these devices are essential".Amazon carries on talking a good game, but there are plenty of good reasons to back transparency.Amazon.comEbooksGadgetsBobbie Johnsonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Paperback Mass-Market Fiction Top 5 at a Glance1. THE DEVIL’S PUNCHBOWL, by Greg Iles2. DEAR JOHN, by Nicholas Sparks3. THE LOVELY BONES, by Alice Sebold4. PLUM SPOOKY, by Janet Evanovich5. STREET GAME, by Christine Feehan feeds.nytimes.com |