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walkitoutHere's the link:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/07/20/businessinsider-sorry-amazon-kindle-e-books-outselling-hardcovers-isnt-that-impressive-2010-7.DTL
Doubt _that_ will work forever. What a nasty looking URL. Anyway.
As their URL indicates, they are not impressed. Here is _why_ they are not impressed: it is something I pointed out, and NPR pointed out. Hardcover book sales are not the same as the book industry as a whole. I wasn't feeling very quantitative before, but look, the Chronicle is here to help.
"According to Nielsen Bookscan, only 23% of total dead-tree book sales this year come from hardcover books. The rest are from paperback books. In other words, assuming Amazon's book business reflects the overall industry, Amazon is still probably selling twice as many paperback books as Kindle books."
If you are a publisher, and this helps you sleep at night, that is only because you are _such a fucking moron you would never survive in a real business sector_. I figure the Chronicle is doing this for complex local political reasons best known to people in the Bay Area. Oh, wait. That whole Bezos thing? That's in a different state. Ah. Perhaps I understand now.
Other tidbits of The Goofiness from this entry: they link to an article from _November 2009_ to support the contention that Amazon is losing money on ebooks it sells. Wow. The mind really boggles. Never mind that whole agency model thing that _forces Amazon to make money on virtually every ebook it sells_.
If I really believed this was one of those yeast brick things like from Prohibition years, I would just giggle and goggle and go wink, wink, nudge, nudge. But I sort of think the author meant it.
(Ok, one more bit, just for laughs: "it implies Amazon has sold around 22 million Kindle books so far this year. That's just the equivalent of 6% of the total print book market, which remains tiny." *snicker*)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/07/20/businessinsider-sorry-amazon-kindle-e-books-outselling-hardcovers-isnt-that-impressive-2010-7.DTL
Doubt _that_ will work forever. What a nasty looking URL. Anyway.
As their URL indicates, they are not impressed. Here is _why_ they are not impressed: it is something I pointed out, and NPR pointed out. Hardcover book sales are not the same as the book industry as a whole. I wasn't feeling very quantitative before, but look, the Chronicle is here to help.
"According to Nielsen Bookscan, only 23% of total dead-tree book sales this year come from hardcover books. The rest are from paperback books. In other words, assuming Amazon's book business reflects the overall industry, Amazon is still probably selling twice as many paperback books as Kindle books."
If you are a publisher, and this helps you sleep at night, that is only because you are _such a fucking moron you would never survive in a real business sector_. I figure the Chronicle is doing this for complex local political reasons best known to people in the Bay Area. Oh, wait. That whole Bezos thing? That's in a different state. Ah. Perhaps I understand now.
Other tidbits of The Goofiness from this entry: they link to an article from _November 2009_ to support the contention that Amazon is losing money on ebooks it sells. Wow. The mind really boggles. Never mind that whole agency model thing that _forces Amazon to make money on virtually every ebook it sells_.
If I really believed this was one of those yeast brick things like from Prohibition years, I would just giggle and goggle and go wink, wink, nudge, nudge. But I sort of think the author meant it.
(Ok, one more bit, just for laughs: "it implies Amazon has sold around 22 million Kindle books so far this year. That's just the equivalent of 6% of the total print book market, which remains tiny." *snicker*)