‘Da Vinci Code’ author Dan Brown’s latest title was released last week:’ The Lost Symbol.’ According to reports on People.com and CNet, it appears that the Amazon Kindle edition of the book may be exceeding hardcover sales on Amazon. This could be a ground-breaking and much-buzzed event given that the Kindle (Amazon’s book reader device) is still relatively new and the publisher (Random House) almost didn’t release the title in Kindle format due to concerns about security.
For those of us in the publishing industry, this news borders on shocking. Are Kindle sales so high due to the low price ($9.99 vs. $16.17 for the hardcover)? Are sales high because fiction readers are migrating to the Kindle? Is Kindle going to take over the world?
Regardless, this report adds legitimacy to the significance of the Kindle device and the need for publishers to take notice and make their titles available on this platform. Self-published authors can also make books available on Kindle (and we offer formatting services through Authority Publishing). It will certainly be interesting to see how all of this shakes out!
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
September 21st, 2009 at 1:45 pm
I hope someone can and will document this. If it’s true, even in the first weeks of the Dan Brown release, it IS a huge shift. Hard to believe there are enough active Kindle users out there to hit these numbers.
February 4th, 2010 at 10:48 pm
I am really impressed by the method that you write, and the subject is quality. For me, I frankly don’t understand the resistance to e-book readers in general, and to the Kindle specifically. Sure, some people will have requirements that the Kindle doesn’t meet — if you’re interested in reading fully-formatted research papers in PDF form, for example, the Kindle won’t be satisfactory — but I think for most avid readers, it’s a great device. People who say “just buy the real books” aren’t considering the ecological concerns (not the paper, the *shipping*) nor the amount of space available to store them. People who say “just use the library, then” clearly have mainstream tastes or *very good* libraries (I have neither).People who won’t buy anything with any form of DRM kind of have a point — at least Amazon seems to understand that giving up my first-sale rights to sell or lend a book I buy requires that book to be sold at a pretty deep discount.On the whole, the Kindle is a great device, and a pleasure to use for reading fiction. Thanks and enjoy your day!