Slog
News & ArtsTuesday, December 29, 2009
Books What's Behind the Kindle Smokescreen?
Posted by Paul Constant on Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 3:29 PM
Mashable took a lot of the air out of Amazon's announcement that Kindle books outsold physical books for the first time on Christmas Day.
And now Cnet notes that people are pulling apart the Amazon Kindle bestseller list and discovering something:
And then there are the titles that Kindle owners really, really love—the ones they get for nothing. As the Washington Post noted earlier this week, the list of best-selling Kindle titles is dominated by free books:
Amazon's customers have made it clear that $9.99 is still too high for their taste. Most titles in the company's list of top 100 Kindle bestsellers are priced below $9.99, and the most popular price point is $0.00.The good folks at MediaBistro have gone ahead and counted, so you don't have to. As of a day ago, 64 of Amazon's top 100 Kindle titles cost nada.
For what it's worth, Cnet notes that Amazon didn't count the free titles in their Christmas figures.
1
http://www.gutenberg.org
/wiki
/Main_Page
"Project Gutenberg is the place where you can download over 30,000 free ebooks to read on your PC, iPhone, Kindle, Sony Reader or other portable device. "
http://www.gutenberg.org
/wiki
/Main_Page
"Project Gutenberg is the place where you can download over 30,000 free ebooks to read on your PC, iPhone, Kindle, Sony Reader or other portable device. "
3
Yeah, agreed with @2. First Paul Constant praises Serenity. Then he writes a post that seems to lay out a damning indictment against Amazon, but the last sentence reveals the post to be nothing more than the banal observation that people like free things. What the hell Paul Constant. What the hell.
5
Wow. Paul posts and explains an article that points out that people like free stuff. Can you do us all a tiny favor and not talk about Amazon or Kindle for a week? CHALLENGE!
7
The mouthbreathers are really pumping up your Slog hits these days. Wow.
I think everybody who gets a Kindle has a cruise through the freebies. There's a million of 'em, and there are so few proper titles you'd want to add that they come up in droves on almost any search. Not too many people read 'em though.
What I enjoy even better than the free titles are the odd assortment of obscure scholarly or technical ones that are insanely expensive -- "Mansfield's Encyclopedia of Agricultural and Horticultural Crops (Except Ornamentals)" at $1,079.20, or "Comprehensive Water Analysis: Volume 2: Treated Waters" at $624, or "Texture in Food: Volume 1: Semi-Solid Foods" at $191.96, or "Selected Soldering and Brazing Systems (Part 3) at $6,231.20 always tempt me.
I think everybody who gets a Kindle has a cruise through the freebies. There's a million of 'em, and there are so few proper titles you'd want to add that they come up in droves on almost any search. Not too many people read 'em though.
What I enjoy even better than the free titles are the odd assortment of obscure scholarly or technical ones that are insanely expensive -- "Mansfield's Encyclopedia of Agricultural and Horticultural Crops (Except Ornamentals)" at $1,079.20, or "Comprehensive Water Analysis: Volume 2: Treated Waters" at $624, or "Texture in Food: Volume 1: Semi-Solid Foods" at $191.96, or "Selected Soldering and Brazing Systems (Part 3) at $6,231.20 always tempt me.
8
Kindle's are god's way of saying you're too dumb to buy an iPhone and get a better reader you can use.
9
@8 FTL.
Iphones cost a zillion times more than a Kindle -- ten times by the time the second year is up.
Iphones cost a zillion times more than a Kindle -- ten times by the time the second year is up.
10
The whole Amazon concept is completely retrograde.
Selling books -- on the Internet -- which itself is a text medium.
It's like as if you went to the movies, and suddenly after the first scene, they cut in a 30 minute episode of a TV show like 2 1/2 Men.
Or if you went to the Moon, and took a bicycle with you, just so you could ride a bicycle on the Moon.
The whole Amazon concept is completely retrograde.
Selling books -- on the Internet -- which itself is a text medium.
It's like as if you went to the movies, and suddenly after the first scene, they cut in a 30 minute episode of a TV show like 2 1/2 Men.
Or if you went to the Moon, and took a bicycle with you, just so you could ride a bicycle on the Moon.
11
I have to agree with commenters 2 and 3 here. I don't the time to read the linked articles or blogs, so perhaps I'm missing something, but Paul, your post should stand on its own. As is, I can't figure out what actual point is being made here. Cnet discovers people like free things? Cnet discovers that Amazon's claims are accurate? A pretty flimsy post.
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