Are Kindle users buying books? Image: Amazon.com
For this reason I’ve always been reluctant to subscribe to the commonly held view that Amazon’s Kindle is romping ahead in every market, winning an unassailable lead over its rivals.
Let me be clear – I have nothing against Amazon or the Kindle.
When friends come to me and ask what eReader they should buy, my answer is generally a Kindle. They’re affordable, easy to use and the seller isn’t ever going to go bust, leaving you with a useless device.
But that willingness to recommend them doesn’t mean I have to buy into the hype.
Many years ago I used to contribute to an opinion column for a big UK tech mag. One month we were asked to comment on this new device Amazon had launched in the US. Apparently they’d sold out within hours.
The device was of course the Kindle and my scepticism and cynicism were no less well developed in those days.
To paraphrase, I pointed out that selling out of an unknown quantity of a product may not be that great. If you only have a handful of devices it’s easy to sell out without the product really being a huge success.
Amazon’s reluctance to provide actual unit sales for Kindles continues to fuel my wariness.
In recent days two pieces of news have fuelled my suspicion that the reporting and narrative of Kindle’s unassailable lead is open to question.
The first was a survey on behalf of a UK company which suggests “more than a fifth” of people given a Kindle for Christmas have yet to use it.
It could be that recipients are already part way through a book and will turn to their Kindles once that’s finished.
But could the Kindle’s affordability be making it an impulse purchase, bought for people who don’t really have an interest in eBooks? If so, some of those unused Kindles may never get switched on, they might get returned or be passed on to someone else.
A passed on Kindle is one future sale less, though it at least suggests some books might get sold.
But comments reported by paidContent.org suggest that some Kindle users do not, as I’ve long suspected, buy huge numbers of books.
According to the report, to look at the impact of its Kindle Owners’ Lending Library on book sales “Amazon compared two customer groups of Amazon Prime members who have owned an e-reading device for more than six months and have made at least one recent book purchase in the last 30 days.”
So on the basis of this report, even some customers who pay Amazon $79 a year for Prime membership only buy a book once a month.
Can that be right? Could it really be true that some Kindle users will only buy around a dozen books in an entire year? And if it is, how much of the Kindle user base is that true of?
First off, I’m with you on the notion that caution is wise in the absence of information. That said I’d also caution against misreading the lack of information too. AMZ have an interest in sharing as little information about their device and ebook sales as possible.
On the usage after getting Kindle as a gift, I’d be happy enough about that 80% figure given the reluctance many print dedicated readers show to adopt digital formats. What’s more given the fact that Kindle is a dedicated device versus a multi-functional one like the ipad, I think it did okay on the usage front. In any case without other dedicated ereader numbers to compare you are comparing apples with oranges and don’t have a really relevant figure.
As for the other stats we don’t know a what % of the overall Kindle user base this segment represents so it’s dangerous to draw conclusions. on top of which 12 books a year makes someone a fairly moderate user putting them firmly OUT if the light or occasional reader group! In fact, by some counts they might even qualify as heavy reads at one book a month!
Eoin
Hi Eoin
I’d accept that someone going into, say, Waterstones every month and buying a book would be good. I’m less convinced someone who buys a device dedicated to reading only buying twelve books a year is so good, especially with the low costs of some ebooks.
Re the unused figure, if we were to be a bit casual with the figures and match the survey to Amazon’s ‘more than a million Kindles sold a week’ Christmas claim, that would give up something in the region of 900,000 Kindles which haven’t been switched on or whose owners have yet to buy any content.
Which would not be good.
Agree though that we can’t be sure either way, hence why i ended by asking questions rather than trying to squeeze an assertion or conclusion out of the two different sets of data.
Martin
When you click on an article headline like that, you expect at least a hint of an answer. Even better, there is really nothing of substance in the article. Lets ask a question that nobody knows in a non article, then agree that we cant know the answer. Smart…
There are way better blogs than this one, people. Find someone actually talking about things that matter. Your life is too short.
I bought the Kindle touch recently. Out of curiosity and budget, I’ve been hunting for free books. But I’ve also bought some online games for kindle, so my kids could play them. If a book is below $3.99, my mind doesn’t have that hold-back fear because I put down that much for a cup of coffee sometimes. I already have a list of books I want to get as budget allows and the whole sharing thing has me intrigued. Now, I came into this thing later than many people, but if that’s how I feel (a 40 something, sahm, with little free time and a low budget) There are thousands, maybe millions of people with more money, time and energy than me who are buying.
Kindle is a strong product.
I would be curious to know, of those that buy ‘only 1 book a month’, how many did they buy (print or ebook) before that, and whether this is perhaps reintroducing people to reading. I used to consume books voraciously, before Life got too busy and full of excuses.. I’m gearing up to getting ‘reKindled’, and back into it with ebooks…..
Whether it is true or not that Kindle users don’t buy many books, I don’t know. Either way, it will not keep me up at night.
From an internet marketer’s point of view, however, it might be a bit concerning. The statistic seems plausible, but I’m reminded of the saying, “Numbers don’t lie, but they don’t tell the whole story.”
The thing is, Kindle sales are still going up. I don’t have the figure handy, but it’s out there. That said, with more sales come more users. More users mean potential sales.
Here is the BIGGEST reason I think that statistic might be true: the most important commodity for internet marketers these days is getting the ATTENTION of customers. Maybe the books they could buy don’t reach them. If it doesn’t resonate with them or catch their attention, why would they buy it?
Just a thought.