TIPPING POINT: Amazon Announces Tripling of Kindle Hardware Sales, Says Kindle Books Are Now Outselling Hardcovers

By Stephen Windwalker
Editor of Kindle Nation Daily ©Kindle Nation Daily 2010

Just three days before it will report its quarterly earnings this Thursday, Amazon has just put out a rather dazzling press release about Kindle hardware and content sales. Among the stunning developments:

• Amazon is now selling more Kindle ebook copies than hardcover books across the board. It was huge news in September when a single bestseller, Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol, showed more Kindle sales than hardcover sales. Now it's happening for all hardcovers, and there's no way around the fact that, with Amazon's status as the largest bookseller in the world, this is a major event in the world of book publishing. This development has occurred "even while our hardcover sales continue to grow," said Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon.com. Amazon said that in the past three months it has sold 143 Kindle books for every 100 hardcover copies sold, and no free ebooks were counted in that tabulation. The ratio jumped to an astonishing 180:100 for the month of June.
• "We've reached a tipping point with the new price of Kindle--the growth rate of Kindle device unit sales has tripled since we lowered the price from $259 to $189," said Bezos. Amazon also said that the Kindle unit sales had increased each month during the second quarter, and also showed year-over-year increases in each month.
• Amazon gave the most specific data it has yet provided concerning its market share of the overall ebook content market by announcing that, of the 1.14 million ebooks sold through July 6 by author James Patterson, 867,881 were Kindle books. So Amazon has had a 76.1 percent market share of James Patterson's ebook sales, and it is worth noting that the majority of ebooks offered in the Kindle Store are not available in the iBooks Store or anywhere else.
• In another indication that Kindle content must be selling very well on the iPad and the half dozen other devices with Kindle Apps, Amazon said that its overall ebook sales for the first half of 2010 were more than triple what they were in the first half of 2009.
• In addition to Patterson's crossing of the million-ebook threshold, Amazon said that several other authors -- Charlaine Harris, Stieg Larsson, Stephenie Meyer, and Nora Roberts -- have sold over 500,000 Kindle ebooks each. Kindle Nation Daily apparently jumped the gun in estimating Larsson's sales at being over a million before July 6, but his ebook sales are very close to that seven-figure level if they have not already succeeded it.

Amazon's press release is likely to have a salubrious effect on trading in the company's shares between now and the market's close on Thursday, July 22. Although Amazon was seen as giving relatively soft second-quarter guidance when it reported first-quarter earnings in April, today's press release is tantamount to raising its guidance, and such a statement would be very uncharacteristic of the company if blowout earnings were not in the offing.

The company will report second-quarter earnings after the market closes that day. The guts of the company's press release follows:

Kindle Device Unit Sales Accelerate Each Month in Second Quarter; New $189 Price Results in Tipping Point for Growth

 Amazon.com Now Selling More Kindle Books Than Hardcover Books

SEATTLE, Jul 19, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- (NASDAQ: AMZN) -- Millions of people are already reading on Kindles and Kindle is the #1 bestselling item on Amazon.com for two years running. It's also the most-wished-for, most-gifted, and has the most 5-star reviews of any product on Amazon.com. Today, Amazon.com announced that Kindle device unit sales accelerated each month in the second quarter--both on a sequential month-over-month basis and on a year-over-year basis.
"We've reached a tipping point with the new price of Kindle--the growth rate of Kindle device unit sales has tripled since we lowered the price from $259 to $189," said Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon.com. "In addition, even while our hardcover sales continue to grow, the Kindle format has now overtaken the hardcover format. Amazon.com customers now purchase more Kindle books than hardcover books--astonishing when you consider that we've been selling hardcover books for 15 years, and Kindle books for 33 months."
Kindle offers the largest selection of the most popular books people want to read. The U.S. Kindle Store now has more than 630,000 books, including New Releases and 106 of 110 New York Times Best Sellers. Over 510,000 of these books are $9.99 or less, including 75 New York Times Best Sellers. Over 1.8 million free, out-of-copyright, pre-1923 books are also available to read on Kindle.
Recent milestones for Kindle books include:

• Over the past three months, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 143 Kindle books. Over the past month, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 180 Kindle books. This is across Amazon.com's entire U.S. book business and includes sales of hardcover books where there is no Kindle edition. Free Kindle books are excluded and if included would make the number even higher.
• Amazon sold more than 3x as many Kindle books in the first half of 2010 as in the first half of 2009.
• The Association of American Publishers' latest data reports that e-book sales grew 163 percent in the month of May and 207 percent year-to-date through May. Kindle book sales in May and year-to-date through May exceeded those growth rates.
• On July 6, Hachette announced that James Patterson had sold 1.14 million e-books to date. Of those, 867,881 were Kindle books.
• Five authors--Charlaine Harris, Stieg Larsson, Stephenie Meyer, James Patterson, and Nora Roberts--have each sold more than 500,000 Kindle books.

Readers are responding to Kindle's uncompromising approach to the reading experience. Weighing 10.2 ounces, Kindle can be held comfortably in one hand for hours, has an e-ink display that is easy on the eyes even in bright daylight, has two weeks of battery life, lets you buy your books once and read them everywhere--on your Kindle, Kindle DX, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, Mac, PC, BlackBerry, and Android-based devices--and has free 3G wireless with no monthly fees or annual contracts--all at a $189 price.