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The Lessons From the Kindle’s Success

Aug. 13, 2008 Paul Thurrott | Paul Thurrott's Supersite for Windows

As I've often noted here, I love the Kindle. I realize it's still too expensive, but it's an amazing eBook reader, with daily newspapers and other periodicals that are automatically downloaded to the device, a pervasive wireless network and device-based online store, and the best collection of content ever seen on such a device. Is it successful? I suppose in the realm of eBook readers, it's a stunning success. As a mass market consumer electronics product, maybe not so much. But my favorite NYT blogger says that Amazon's device is selling faster than expected. And that's good news all around, especially if you're a fan of reading as I am.

Amazon.com’s Kindle is not the flop that many predicted when the e-book reader debuted last year. Citibank’s Mark Mahaney has just doubled his forecast of Kindle sales for the year to 380,000. He figures that Amazon’s sales of Kindle hardware and software will hit $1 billion by 2010.

Amazon hasn’t confirmed these numbers, but the e-commerce giant has said that of the 150,000 titles it now sells for the Kindle as well as in paper, more than 10 percent of the sales are in Kindle format.

Anecdotally, I know several people who are absolutely gaga for the Kindle. They happen to be exactly the sort of people for whom Amazon said it had designed the device: heavy readers who want an easy way to carry several books around with them. These Kindle fans are also delighted by how easy it is to shop for and download books onto the device using Amazon’s wireless store.

I think there are a few lessons from this. First you can’t underestimate the miracle that happens when you make something really easy for people.

The second lesson is, to quote a cliché, it takes all kinds. Steve Jobs dismissed the e-book market because “people don’t read anymore.” That may be true broadly, but there could well be a $1 billion business for Amazon serving the tiny share of people who read a lot.

For others — me, for example — software to read Kindle books on an iPhone would be great.

That would be great. Another thing that would be great is a software utility for Windows that would do the same: I'd love to be able to access my Kindle content from a laptop or Tablet PC while traveling.

Anyway, I'm ecstatic it's doing well. The Kindle is one of three technologies that have arrived over the past 12 months--the other two being Windows Home Server/HP MediaSmart Server and Live Mesh--that have really had a measurable (and positive) effect on my life.

Discuss this Article 37

I am Bjorn
on Aug 13, 2008
Have you checked the rise of Amazon's stock during the last 48 hours since the Kindle news? Stellar! And since both the Kindle and their successful MP3 shop will be introduced in Germany this fall (and other European countries in 2009), stockholders can expect some additional mountain air.
fzanes
on Aug 13, 2008
"software to read Kindle books on an iPhone would be great" Reading a book on a 3.5 inch screen just does not make sense. Forget about Apple and Amazon stock...I think I am going to buy stock in Lasik.
JuryDuty
on Aug 13, 2008
"Reading a book on a 3.5 inch screen just does not make sense." I don't know. That's about 1/3 to 1/2 the length of a paperback. I've read books from a Windows Mobile PDA before and found it amazingly comfortable. Now, I can't imagine reading for HOURS like that, but for a quick one chapter read as you commute by public transportation or over breakfast, there's no harm to be done to your eyes there.
Ocean
on Aug 13, 2008
>>I've read books from a Windows Mobile PDA before and found it amazingly comfortable. Now, I can't imagine reading for HOURS like that, but for a quick one chapter read as you commute by public transportation or over breakfast, there's no harm to be done to your eyes there.<< Agreed. I've read and finished several books that way. I wish that book sellers would include the option of purchasing the digital rights for a small extra fee when you buy the paperback. I often whip my phone out while in the waiting room or waiting in line...
Waethorn
on Aug 13, 2008
"For others — me, for example — software to read Kindle books on an iPhone would be great." "That would be great. Another thing that would be great is a software utility for Windows that would do the same: I'd love to be able to access my Kindle content from a laptop or Tablet PC while traveling." Using Kindle without....er....a Kindle. How novel! ;) (That's a double pun right thar!)
Ocean
on Aug 13, 2008
The only thing that leaves me cold on the Kindle is the same thing that leaves me cold on digital music... I can't sell it if I don't like it / don't want to read it again. More than anything, I'm convinced thats what the move to the digital marketplace is all about. If Amazon changed even a quarter of the people that buy used books or use used book swapping sites (like paperbackswap.com) over to having to purchase new copies, they'd double their sales.
bettieblu
on Aug 13, 2008
eReader by Fictionwise in one free iPhone/iTouch app on the iTunes app store. It probably wont allow you to read Kindle books and I doubt that Amazon will ever allow that.
fzanes
on Aug 13, 2008
@Ocean This is just a comment in general, and not a criticism of you, but I think that it is interesting that people these days can not seem to go any amount of time without reaching for some device to help pass the time. As soon as there is an intermission at a concert, or a long line somewhere, people immediately reach for something to fill in the time. Young kids today can not sit still for 5 mins without something to look/listen to...they have to be entertained in some way 24/7. I also think that books and stories lose a bit of their effectiveness when they are read a paragraph here and a paragraph there. I know that when I am reading a book, I try and finish it as quickly as I can without a ton of free time between....I seem to get more out of it that way, but that's just me... Just can't imagine reading some of my favs a few sentences at a time, here and there throughout the day...
feralboy
on Aug 13, 2008
Another thing that most people forget, that Amazon got right, is the pricing of the content. At about half of the price of their paperbound alternatives, buying ebooks finally seems price appropriate. I bought a book for my phone that was twenty dollars, on the Kindle it would have been 10. The most common complaint about ebooks has been price...Amazon seems to have figured that out. But, here's the catch. I read last month about Amazon's Kindle success in relation to a booksellers show...in the article it mentioned Amazon's pricing and said that publishers were nervous, because Amazon was selling their content WAY below cost! That surprised me -- I thought the good pricing was due to deals made with the publishers (so it seems, they still don't get it!). Anyway, it will be interesting to see if the publshing houses crack or if Amazon changes it's "introductory pricing" on content. Oh, for those who can't imagine reading on their phone or a PDA, give it a try. I've been doing it for years and it's VERY pleasureable...only highly formatted texts or texts that have graphics are problematic. Novels rock.
I am Bjorn
on Aug 13, 2008
feralboy said: "publishers were nervous, because Amazon was selling their content WAY below cost! [...] Anyway, it will be interesting to see if the publshing houses crack or if Amazon changes it's "introductory pricing" on content." Global warming? Alarming recessions? The year of the Linux desktop? Forget 'em all! THIS is the pain-in-the-arse-topic of the 21st century: copyright owners' and lobbyists' greediness. :-( I cannot believe it! After the voraciousness of both the music and the movie industries ("iTunes price model is wrong", "movies are way too cheap", "all torrent users are pirates", yackety-yack), the publishing houses join as well? If this is true, we all know what happens next. Amazon is forced to offer the ebooks at a better price... or the publishing houses go to BOL. Yeah, right.
Ocean
on Aug 13, 2008
>>This is just a comment in general, and not a criticism of you, but I think that it is interesting that people these days can not seem to go any amount of time without reaching for some device to help pass the time. As soon as there is an intermission at a concert, or a long line somewhere, people immediately reach for something to fill in the time. << It certainly makes the wait pass by more quickly...what should people do?
Waethorn
on Aug 13, 2008
"Global warming? Alarming recessions? The year of the Linux desktop? Forget 'em all! THIS is the pain-in-the-***-topic of the 21st century:" http://rainbow-conspiracy.ytmnd.com Enjoy.
cesjr
on Aug 13, 2008
"Steve Jobs dismissed the e-book market because “people don’t read anymore.” My guess is that Steve said this to motivate the book publishers to come to the table. Apple has probably approached the publishers and been turned away, out of fear that Apple would dominate as it has for online music. So Steve says this to irk/motivate them to come back to apple. The Kindle may be great, but frankly, I don't want to carry another device. I take my laptop to work and carry my iPhone. What's the future? - carrying a personal mobile phone, a Corp IT-dictated Blackberry for business, a portable media player, portable game machine, portable GPS, ebook reader, and on and on - or one device like the iPhone? I know which future I want. by the way, I've checked on the available e-book readers (the DRM ones) for the iPhone and the selection just sucks. Nothing like the Kindle's selection. Amazon should make a Kindle reader for the iPhone. Probably never will happen, which is just plain dumb.
fzanes
on Aug 13, 2008
@Ocean "what should people do?" I'm not saying that it's a bad thing, I'm just making an observation. As far as, "what should people do" while in line...well, we certainly can't talk to each other, that would be bad...not sure, I guess watching a TV show or reading a book on a 3 inch screen is better than nothing. I just think you really lose something when you shrink things down that much, and cram things into 5-10 mins chunks. It's nice when you make time to read, and take your time with it ya know... Think about how much better things are on a HUGE screen, and when you have the time to really take it all in....you lose that when you go the other way and make it all small and quick...
feralboy
on Aug 13, 2008
Until Amazon can convince the publishers that this is the future, and the money savings more than justifies a drop in content costs, then I don't think Amazon will be able to branch out to iPhones and PCs and Blackberry and Windows Mobile devices. Right now, I think that Amazon is PROVING to the publishing industry that eBooks are viable and can be extremely profitable. And since they're currently taking a bath on the content, they can't bring the cost of the reader down to a resonable $200, because the sales need to be gradual to make financial sense. Once they can get the content providers on board with amenable pricing, it will be interesting to see how fast the price drops. Right now there are a lot of people, like my sister, who don't carry laptops around, use their phone as a phone, and have no problem dropping a Kindle in their puses, backpacks, briefcases...but that market is dwindling rather than growing. One device to rule them all...but let me choose the device.
mikegalos@msn.com
on Aug 13, 2008
One other option is to use the Microsoft Reader software which has versions for Windows, Windows Mobile and a special version for Origami UMPCs. While Microsoft never got the publishers engaged enough to hit critical mass, there are a LOT of public domain books out there that can be read on Reader and it is both easy to use and very tightly tuned to make the reading experience as good as possible (ClearType, OSPREY) http://www.microsoft.com/reader has the software and links to both DRM and free content.
mikegalos@msn.com
on Aug 13, 2008
Re Steve Jobs The full quote when asked about the Amazon Kindle was: "It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore. Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.” This wasn't kicking the book publishers to do more. This was saying, we don't need to compete with Amazon because cool people like us don't read books and we don't build uncool products. Notice how the 40% became "people" and the 60% disappeared. It was his usual way of slamming anyone who want something he doesn't think they should want. He's got a long history here. Of course, a company with a single digit market share slamming a competitor for going after a 60% market does seem a little bit like sour grapes but without a Tablet he's stuck with reading on desktop displays or the iPhone/iPod and to get enough clarity for ludic reading (the state where when you read you "go away") on an iPhone he's going to need to change his subpixel font rendering to something like ClearType and that's a change Apple has resisted for years to keep the high-end publishing market happy. As Bill Hill (the inventor of ClearType and the guru of on-screen readability) said in a post on his blog The Future of Reading (http://billhillsblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/lack-of-decent-tools-holding-b...): "But in my view, there’s no “right” or “wrong” here. There’s no question that Apple’s rendering strategy gives you much better WYSIWYG – what you see on the screen is closer to what you’d see if you printed the text. On the other hand, when we invented ClearType we weren’t at all concerned with printing. We were trying to improve reading on-screen to make it as good as it could possibly be. With Apple’s long background in areas like design, publishing, etc, it’s understandable why they took the route they did."
Ocean
on Aug 13, 2008
>>One other option is to use the Microsoft Reader software which has versions for Windows, Windows Mobile<< MS has all but given up on the software...and there are better options out there. eReader and Mobipocket are big among the ebook crowd today. MS Reader barely rates. It's not even available for the latest versions of Windows Mobile...just PocketPC. Poke your head around this site where people are pretty clued in. http://www.mobileread.com/forums/ Here too, where publishers have coalesced: ereader.com
Ocean
on Aug 13, 2008
>>Notice how the 40% became "people" and the 60% disappeared.<< He was more right than he was wrong: <> But the point is whether he was right or wrong in using it as a business rationale for not competing against Amazon. I think he was wrong. This is the money quote: <> http://egan.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/book-lust/#more-15
Waethorn
on Aug 13, 2008
"It's not even available for the latest versions of Windows Mobile" LIAR: "This version of Microsoft Reader for Pocket PC (version 2.4.1) is compatible with: Windows Mobile™ 2003 based Pocket PC and Phone Edition devices Windows Mobile 2003, Second Edition based Pocket PC and Phone Edition devices Windows Mobile 5.0 based Pocket PC and Phone Edition devices Windows Mobile 6.0 based Pocket PC and Phone Edition devices It is not compatible with Windows Mobile-based Smartphone devices." It requires a touchscreen device - hence the lack of support of Smartphone devices.
CompactDstrxion
on Aug 13, 2008
http://www.amazon.co.uk/kindle returns 'Looking for something? We're sorry. The Web address you entered is not a functioning page on our site.' Oh is that the sound of Europe getting shafted for no good reason again?
mikegalos@msn.com
on Aug 13, 2008
CompactDstrxion It may be the sound of Europe getting shafted again but it's not for "no good reason" The copyright laws and distribution agreements vary wildly with each country and sometimes with each publisher. It's not uncommon for the publisher of a book to have no rights to the book in another country where the laws require that IP be owned by a company based in that country. Again, not saying you aren't getting shafted, just that it's not arbitrary and it's a problem that'll take a long time to fix.
mikegalos@msn.com
on Aug 13, 2008
Ocean Actually, if your numbers are right (and I trust you more than I trust Steve Jobs) then he's not "more right than he was wrong", he's even more wrong. His statement relegated 60% of people into the "we don't care about you" group. With your numbers, he's saying "people" (read as people we care about) are the 27% of the population that don't read books. The 73% who do don't matter. Also note, he wasn't saying, "Here's why Apple isn't entering this market and competing against Amazon", he was saying "Here's why anybody getting into this market is doomed to fail no matter how good their product" as a response to Amazon. It really was his usual "I've decided that people we build product for don't do x so if you are one of the people who do x, you don't count" philosophy that defines Apple's philosophy of lack of product choices. (x in this case being read books but there are lots of examples) Personally, I'm guessing that more people read books each year than edit their own HD Video but I don't make corporate decisions based on my guesses so if I'm wrong, no big deal.
DRWAM
on Aug 13, 2008
Dipsh and John P, do you think we can get a copy of Jim McGreevey's 'The Confession" on Kindle? Or how about his ex, Dina's follow up book 'Silent Partner":)
Ocean
on Aug 13, 2008
>>It requires a touchscreen device - hence the lack of support of Smartphone devices.<< Actually thats what I was talking about...since I have (as I've mentioned many times) a Windows Mobile device. I used to use it when I had my Dell Axim, but got tired of carrying the extra device. >>Actually, if your numbers are right (and I trust you more than I trust Steve Jobs) then he's not "more right than he was wrong", he's even more wrong.<< Again, that actually what I meant. :) >>I'm guessing that more people read books each year than edit their own HD Video << Touche'
mikegalos@msn.com
on Aug 13, 2008
Just to clarify (since the terminology is confusing) Using the new terminology: Reader works on Windows Mobile Pro Reader works on Windows Mobile Classic Reader does NOT work on Windows Mobile Standard (Essentially this means if you have a touch screen and you are using an OS newer than Smartphone 2002 software you're fine with the latest version of the Reader software.)
Ocean
on Aug 13, 2008
>>if you have a touch screen and you are using an OS newer than Smartphone 2002 software you're fine with the latest version of the Reader software.<< However, if you have the uber popular Samsung Blackjack, or the T-Mobile Dash or any of the other popular inexpensive smartphones...you're pretty much screwed.
mikegalos@msn.com
on Aug 13, 2008
Ocean Editing your HD Vlog about your favorite hoodies? - Cool Reading a book? - What are you? Amish?
mikegalos@msn.com
on Aug 13, 2008
Ocean If you have a Blackjack or Dash then you have other choices but not Reader. The good news is that you have ClearType to help readability no matter what app you use.
DRWAM
on Aug 13, 2008
Mike, that comment about reading a book made my wife laugh too! Thanks. Doc.
Waethorn
on Aug 13, 2008
"However, if you have the uber popular Samsung Blackjack, or the T-Mobile Dash or any of the other popular inexpensive smartphones...you're pretty much screwed." Actually, Windows Mobile Smartphones prior to Windows Mobile 6 also don't have Office Mobile either (except Outlook Mobile, for obvious reasons). It isn't part of the shipping OS. They rectified that in version 6 - the only difference between Pro and Standard is touchscreen capabilities. OEM's can customize them by adding functionality, but Microsoft no longer allows OEM's to take out functionality of Windows Mobile, beginning with version 6.1. Windows Mobile 7 will supposedly have even harder restrictions, but with some new options for adding extra UI elements (next-gen GPU-accelerated TouchFlo 3D maybe?), and hardware designs. Microsoft just wants to make sure that every user has at least the same core functionality before stuff is added on. Office Mobile is now a core feature of every Windows Mobile device moving forward. According to the newest Windows Mobile website, all Windows Mobile 6.1 devices except for ruggedized units designed for vertical markets, are "Smartphones"?? Interesting. So GPS and PMP units are what? Called "Windows CE devices" now? Does that mean that there won't be non-phone PDA's with "Windows Mobile" anymore? Is there anybody that really cares about having a disconnected PDA anymore anyway? I'm guessing this is a precursor to subnotebook mini-tablet PDA's running desktop versions of Windows hitting the market hard....With devices like those made by Raon Digital and "real" UMPC's (NOT underpowered "Netbooks" like the Eee PC, but the UMPC platform specifications established by Microsoft, consisting of a tablet-style PC), it's easy to see that the future will see more and more people keeping their personal computing in their pocket. Verrrrry interesting....
gorath
on Aug 13, 2008
(feel free to ignore) Miegalos, you want to hear the sound of the UK getting shafted? It's echoed across the country, where people are paying over £1.20 per LITRE of fuel (not gallon) we pay more for goods than in mainland europe, and a hell of a lot more than in the states. There are actual laws that prevent importers buying cheap stock from the states and reselling it here. Our currency appears to be the strongest, yet everything still costs more £s than you'd pay in Euros or $s in most countries. Our average income is lower than our average outgoings Our outgoings are set to rise again as more arbitary rises in utilities occur, and the fuel "crisis" drives prices of everything into the stratosphere Our wages are set to stall or actually decrease We can't find any manual labour jobs because a) we sold off all our industry and b) our government 'forgot' to set a limit on immigrant workers being allowed in. (sorry , rant over)
Waethorn
on Aug 13, 2008
"With devices like those made by Raon Digital and "real" UMPC's...." Speaking of which: http://www.pocketables.net/2008/08/review-willcom.html
Waethorn
on Aug 13, 2008
I should point out: iTunes: "Still a pig (TM)." ;)
dstrack
on Aug 14, 2008
Totally agree with you Paul... on the Kindle/WHS/Live Mesh... All three have been a huge impact on my tech life as well. I've been traveling alot lately and the Kindle has been in my hand everywhere I go. LOVE IT.
scoobyclub
on Aug 14, 2008
"All man's miseries derive from not being able to sit quietly in a room alone" C.Jung. To which he would have now added "without texting or calling someone on his mobile phone". Seriously it's like one global OCD epidemic going on with mobile phones. To answer the "queue" question I would do what we did before mobile phones. Connect with the environment and people around or just reflect on some stuff. I'm not Amish but they've got a point.
fzanes
on Aug 15, 2008
@scoobyclub Great quote!! I couldn't agree more!

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