Michael S. Hart wrote:
"Amazon.com, one of the nation’s largest bookstores, said Monday that for the last three months, sales of electronic books for the Kindle, Amazon’s e-reader, outnumbered sales of hardcover books for the first time."
The full press release: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1449176&highlight This press release is not even within hooting distance of being on the level. It is as near as you can get to lying without actually lying in the legally prosecutable sense. "the growth rate of Kindle device unit sales has tripled since we lowered the price from $259 to $189," Notice how they don't talk about sales, nor about sales growth. They talk about sales growth rate increment. The sales growth rate increment is the _second_ differential of actual sales numbers. What makes a marketeer use a number twice removed from the actual number? The actual number must be so ugly, even the creative efforts of a team of marketeers and accountants cannot make it presentable. And how carefully they word their press release to confuse their readers! "the growth rate of Kindle device unit sales has tripled". They confused Teleread blogger Paul Biba to such an extent that he happily volunteers to speak out the lie Amazon did not tell: "Kindle sales triple" http://www.teleread.com/2010/07/19/amazon-sells-180-ebooks-for-every-100-pbo... (Paul Biba quotes the press release in its entirety and adds just the title. In the title he summarizes the press release into two bullet points. Both are blatantly wrong. Obviously you don't need reading comprehension skills to become a blogger.) But let *us* read this press release with some grains of salt: If they had to lower prices, their growth rate must have been very low. So low that, tripled, they still were ashamed to give it out. After a > 25% price cut they can't honestly volunteer a better statement than that! I just can see Steve ROTFLing. Why don't they squarely tell us how many units they are selling? Why don't they tell us why they were forced to drop the price in the first place? "The Kindle format has now overtaken the hardcover format." The hardcover is a niche product with a much higher price point. Why don't they compare ebook sales against all book sales? "the Kindle has the most 5-star reviews" It is expected, that, being the bestselling product, it gets the most reviews in any score category. How do users review the Kindle? And how does that compare to the average of all product reviews? Why don't they tell us that? "Over 1.8 million free, out-of-copyright, pre-1923 books are also available to read on Kindle." Available from Google, Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg. Available on all other platforms as well. No need to fiddle with USB cables or pay charges if you are using an Apple or Android device instead of the Kindle. They don't tell you that. The real reason for this content-free press release at this time is: Amazon's boat is sinking fast. To distract investors they have to hold a dance on deck. "Analysts said Amazon’s announcement could assuage investors’ concerns that the iPad threatens Kindle sales. Amazon’s stock price is down about 16 percent in the last three months, in part because of those fears." -- http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/technology/20kindle.html?_r=2&hp -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster@gutenberg.org