Source Claims 240K Kindles Sold

Naturalist writes "Exact data on (the Linux-powered) Kindle sales figures have been hard to come by. Amazon is notoriously tight-lipped about it, and although CEO Jeff Bezos did give some Kindle-related information back in July, the company has yet to break out how many readers it has sold to date. Now TechCrunch claims to have spoken to a source close to Amazon with direct knowledge of the company's sales figures. According to this unnamed source, Amazon has sold 240,000 Kindles to date, for an estimated hardware revenue between $86 million and $96 million; media sales would push the total above $100M." We've been following the Kindle since its launch nine months ago.

Comments

uhhh

[larry bagina]

240M (as in million) is not the same as 240,000.

Re:uhhh

[Pikoro]

Now if only they could "kindle" some interest in the darned things and make the media format open we might have something to be excited about.

Re:uhhh

[Anonymous Coward]

I read it and assumed there was some sort of Three Kindles Per Child thing going on.

Re:uhhh

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what you're talking about ... I constantly mix roman numerals with our decimal system and have no problem reading that.

It does, however, make things interesting with the checks I write.

Re:uhhh

[bobdotorg]

No, No!

They sold 240 MegaKindles, each of which is one seventh the physical size of the Library of Congress.

Re:uhhh

[Anonymous Coward]

Now if only they could "kindle" some interest in the darned things

That's mostly because Amazon have awful hardware designers -- Apple or Microsoft or anyone else would have done a decent job but whoever designed the 1970s-style ugliness that is Kindle needs to be fired, and then the Amazon manager who approved it needs to be fired, and so on up the chain. Thankfully

e-ink will be on magazine covers before the year end and so hopefully we'll get decent devices soon.

and make the media format open we might have something to be excited about.

With DRM/TPMs being legally protected now there's a big push in the copyright industry to move to protected digital forms. When content is surrounded by DRM/TPMs then they can remove fair use or anything that law makers provide.

Re:uhhh

[robbiedo]

It is open enough with support for the Mobipocket software. Easily create supported books. I just bought the Sony PRS-505 because of just released firmware supporting EPUB and Adobe DRM. Really like the Sony reader.

Re:uhhh

[NicknamesAreStupid]

Not sure where the 240M comes from in this tread, but before the days of megabytes, 'M' stood for 1,000 (actually the roman numeral). It is still used that way in publishing (CPM means cost per thousand, not million).

Re:uhhh

[Darkness404]

With DRM/TPMs being legally protected now there's a big push in the copyright industry to move to protected digital forms. When content is surrounded by DRM/TPMs then they can remove fair use or anything that law makers provide.

With DRM/TPMs being legally protected, there now is a larger hacking movement then ever to sabotage DRM schemes before they are even released.

Re:uhhh

[base3]

With DRM/TPMs being legally protected now there's a big push in the copyright industry to move to protected digital forms. When content is surrounded by DRM/TPMs then they can remove fair use or anything that law makers provide.

I'm normally among the first to smell a Treacherous Computing/Digital Restrictions Management dystopia, but can't "e-paper" be photocopied or scanned? I'm picturing a solenoid or two and a short program that synchronizes the "next page" button with the "scan/copy" button here.

Re:uhhh

[SirGeek]

I have one too and I love it. The only negative is that if I use Calibre (the Linux software) I cannot use the Windows software (that comes with the ebook).

It isn't that important but having the ability to sync with my Vista Laptop and my Linux desktop would be nice.

Re:uhhh

[larry bagina]

The original article title (since changed without any acknowledgement) was "Source Claims 240M Kindles Sold".

You know its slashdot when it's..

[ForestGrump]

You know you're reading slashdot when the number given is 1,000 times off.

240,000 is not 240 million

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[antek9]

That's not M as in Million, it's M as in Mousand.

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[acvh]

Bzzzt. For anyone who has worked in banking in the US, M means thousand, and MM means million. It bugs me to this day when people write 240M when they mean 240 million.

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[Anonymous Coward]

And what's the logic behind this terminology? Why would you use M as thousand?

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[NemosomeN]

You are correct, $250M is 250,000, and 250M Kindles is 250,000,000. Find a bank that will let me earn interest on a Kindle, and I'll use MM to count them in millions.

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[ForestGrump]

Interesting. The only knowledge I have of MM being millions is with natrual gas MMBTU

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[Anonymous Coward]

To be exact, it is 245.760 Kindle units.

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[Adambomb]

Latin. Its the roman numeral for 1000.

See milli.

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[darkerhelios]

Don't worry everybody, that is 240M in hard drive manufacturers' Kindles.

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[mcsqueak]

Bzzzt. For anyone who has worked in banking in the US, M means thousand, and MM means million. It bugs me to this day when people write 240M when they mean 240 million.

M is also used in the advertising industry for thousands. For example, the cost of an ad buy can be given in thousands of impressions, known as CCM (cost per thousand).

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[Daimanta]

Figures that an American institute uses outdated systems of counting and measuring instead of internationally defined ones.

k = kilo is 1000
M = mega is 1.000.000
G = giga(jiga for bttf fans) is 1.000.000.000

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[Anonymous Coward]

For example, the cost of an ad buy can be given in thousands of impressions, known as CCM (cost per thousand).

Are you sure it doesn't mean Clickety-Clicks per Moron?

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[Anonymous Coward]

240,000? Wow! That's almost a quarter billion.

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[bsDaemon]

The editors learned math from their Latin professors... what are you going to do?

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[mcsqueak]

Are you sure it doesn't mean Clickety-Clicks per Moron?

The term is used for traditional print and billboard media as well as online, so no... I don't think it stands for Clickety-Clicks per Moron. :)

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[Anonymous Coward]

You know you're reading slashdot when

Or that a "source" saying something to someone gets reported as though it were factual.

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[sunderland56]

For anyone who has worked in banking in the US, M means thousand, and MM means million.

The target audience of slashdot is geeks - specifically, engineering/computer geeks. This audience uses K for thousand.

If you want to use M for thousand on bankerdot.org, sure, go for it.

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[Zouden]

Wouldn't it make sense to use K?

As a rule, Latin is used for numbers less than 1. Greek is used for numbers greater than 1.

1000 = kilo (greek)
1/1000 = milli (latin)

10 = deca (greek)
1/10 = deci (latin)

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[Lehk228]

it's roman numerals, M is 1000

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[Kyro]

Is that why the U.S. banking system went belly-up?

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[Mad Merlin]

I hate grammar Nazi's.

Are you intentionally trying to earn their (completely justified) wrath?

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[Kjella]

k = kilo is 1000
M = mega is 1.000.000
G = giga(jiga for bttf fans) is 1.000.000.000

I think you would be most confused if someone abbriviated one billion dollars as "1G". It works for computers because we say "ten kilobytes" but for most people it'd be just as confusing that "ten thousand dollars" is "10k" or "10M" since noone uses the kilodollar. Both things are just a learned habit from an indirect source (SI prefixes or Latin).

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[maxume]

Your tense is all wrong. At most, the U.S. banking system is going belly-up.

More likely, Crazy Cramer is correct and Wall street is in the midst of recovery, with the rest of the economy to follow over the next year or so (because nay-sayers and doom-cryers aside, the U.S. economy is, no really, it is, productive, so the disaster is only partial).

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[cpotoso]

If I had mod points I'd give them to you. I had never heard of this latin/greek thing, but it does seem to be real.

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[Chees0rz]

WTB SOJ - 900K
WTB SOJ - 900K
WTB SOJ - 900K

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[Reverend528]

This audience uses K for thousand

No, we use K for 2**10, which is 1024, not 1000.

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[Gr8Apes]

which in modern usage is only used for copyrights these days, and not even there very often. Too damn hard to read. (MCMXCIX as an example, or MCMLXXXVIII - quick - what's that?)

milli = 1/1000.

Kilo = 1000

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[dave1g]

is it all of banking? I just thought it was us crazy people working at bloomberg.

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[Geof]

Right, but k (lower case, as in metric) is 1,000.

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[ncc74656]

M is also used in the advertising industry for thousands. For example, the cost of an ad buy can be given in thousands of impressions, known as CCM (cost per thousand).

I have a tube tester for which the schematic used "M" where we would now use "k" and "Meg" where we would now use "M." As you can see in the picture, it contains a roll chart of different types of tubes and the settings to use to determine whether they're any good. A few years ago, I tried to puzzle out a way to test tubes not listed in the chart by pulling their operating characteristics from a manual and somehow converting that to tester settings. I never did get that figured out, and the weird results I was getting by thinking that "4.7M" meant 4.7 million instead of 4700 didn't help any.

(The schematic is dated April 1940. When the electronics industry switched over to the units it uses now, I don't know. Where my copy of Terman (3rd ed., 1947) gives component values at all, resistances tend not to be abbreviated. It may have been published during a transitional period, and the decision was made to not abbreviate so as to avoid confusion.)

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[shellbeach]

That's not M as in Million, it's M as in Mousand.

Yeah, they should have used K as in Kousand ...

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[inasity_rules]

In Zimbabwe we call a trillion a "Tridza"... Until recently we didn't deal in figures below 1 billion. Funny thing is ( I suppose we're not a technical country), we never used SI units. Just things like, "mill", "bill" and "wire"... Practically SI units for currency don't seem to make sense.

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[Anonymous Coward]

Donald Rumsfeld is giving the president his daily briefing. He concludes by saying: "Yesterday, 3 Brazilian soldiers were killed in an accident". "OH DEAR GOD NO!!!" George W. Bush exclaims. "That's terrible!!" His staff sits stunned at this display of emotion, nervously watching as the president sits, head in hands. Finally, the President, devastated, looks up and asks "How many is a Brazillion?"

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you actually living in Zimbabwe? Wow... well, I hope things will get better out there soon for everyone's sake

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[ConanG]

Then why would they use MM for million? Wouldn't that be 2 thousand, not 1 million?

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[Ed Avis]

Hah, I never knew that. At least 'k' for thousand is unambiguous. (Those who prefer 1024 should use uppercase K, which is also Kelvin, though unlikely to be confused.)

MM for million is not such a great idea; in scientific notation it would be a million million, and in Roman numerals 2000.

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[Jellybob]

And the of course there's the Bakers Kilobyte.

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[xded]

No. That's 240 Million indles.

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[xaxa]

In the UK we sort-of use the kilopound (k£?). "It costs five kay" means it costs 5000, and could be written as £5k. We
write "£5M" to mean £5000000, but it's always spoken as "million", not "em".

Incidentally, Google tells me that (UK£ 5) * Boltzmann constant = 1.34958567 Ã--
10-22 m2 kg s-2 K-1 U.S. Dollars. And there are lots of non-technical uses of "£5k" in the
search results, whereas "$5k" is either UK sites or technical US sites.

[Apologies for the £ mess, there's no way to get that symbol to work correctly on /. -- even &sterling; doesn't work any more. Bring on the Unicode!]

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[syntaxglitch]

No, thousand should be a lowercase 'k', and should be attached to the following word, not the number. e.g., "240 kiloKindles".

Really, SI prefixes aren't that complicated... If people would just take a hectosecond or two to think about what they're saying, it'd make things less confusing for everybody.

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the slashdot audience, can anybody tell me what that is in units of Libraries of Congress?

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[JAlexoi]

Really? I thought it depended only on chance...
pico is less than 1 and is derived from italian, though nano is still below 1 and is derived from greek...

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[acvh]

First, Get Off My Lawn.

Second, some of us use computers for business, not just for posting to Slashdot. Twenty years of financial services IT makes me a geek, whether I like it or not.

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[Anonymous Coward]

so they probably sold as much as Sony in 2007? Way to go...

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[tyrione]

Then why would they use MM for million? Wouldn't that be 2 thousand, not 1 million?

Yes, but no one wants to acknowledge your correct useage of Roman numerals, so I'll step up and do so.

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[tyrione]

This audience uses K for thousand

No, we use K for 2**10, which is 1024, not 1000.

A pow(2,10) would suffice.

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but you forget, not only has everyone else in the English-speaking world moved to K - ALL of the Latin descendants (French, Italian, etc.) have too... Maybe you'll stick to pounds and ounces for eternity too ?

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[Anonymous Coward]

M as a numeric suffix is a Roman Numeral multiplier

M = 1000
240M = 240,000
240MM = 240,000,000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_numeral
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1000_(number)

At least for the last several thousand years.

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[Xojo]

This audience uses K for thousand

No, we use K for 2**10, which is 1024, not 1000.

Yet, we are exhorted to use Ki for 2**10 and K for 10**3.

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[Anonymous Coward]

yes

Everything old is new again

[Wordplay]

Sales figures look much more exciting in roman numerals!

Re:Everything old is new again

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Is that what it's about? Who came up with the lousy idea of mixing modern and ancient number systems?

Re:Everything old is new again

[kabocox]

Is that what it's about? Who came up with the lousy idea of mixing modern and ancient number systems?

Abbreviations. I hate roman numerals with a passion, but I can see why some would use them as and abbreviation for a prefix. Of course, you could always use, 1e3 instead of 1000 or 1e6 for 1000000. Why isn't that more standard? Heck we were even taught that in junior high. I've yet to see numbers in that format on signs, ads, or random products around though.

Re:Everything old is new again

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I've seen "k" mean thousand and "M" mean million, which is from the modern SI measurement system. In my opinion, it's easier than dealing with exponents. And I've seen it used a lot in the US on billboards and ads, despite this country's unwillingness to embrace SI.

240 Million eh?

[RJBeery]

Yes I know M is abbreviation for 1000 (from Latin root), but I still find the headline to be misleading. 240k is unambiguous, as is 240,000...

Re:240 Million eh?

[lilomar]

Silence Prole!

If the Mod's that be decide you shall not post, YOU SHALL NOT POST!!

one should come up with numbers that make sense

[frovingslosh]

for an estimated hardware revenue between $86 million and $96 million; media sales would push the total above $100M. What in the world is this saying? Lets take a figure lower than the midpoint and call the hardware sales $90 million (although one should be able to get it closer than within ten million dollars if you have the real number sold, since Amazon sells direct and the price is well known). That would only leave about $10 million or so for media sales. Are we really saying that people who shell out all of this money for the DRM encumbered Kindles are not spending more than about 12 percent of that price for stuff to read on it? Seems like a very expensive toy to buy if you're not going to actually use it, yet that's what the numbers here seem to be claiming.

Re:one should come up with numbers that make sense

[kesuki]

ah but that's the thing, you can read slashdot on the kindle, I'm not sure if it's free or not, they like to charge $9.99 for things, but you are paying $400 for a device that has much less expensive hardware, and doesn't charge the end user for their bandwidth, despite using cellular data service...

"More than 350 top blogs from the worlds of business, technology, sports, entertainment, and politics, including BoingBoing, Slashdot, TechCrunch, ESPN's Bill Simmons, The Onion, Michelle Malkin, and The Huffington Post--all updated wirelessly throughout the day."

if one of those 240,000 kindle users could just reply with what blog reading actually costs (do they insert ads for ebooks? to offset bandwidth use? do they charge $1 a month? what?) ah well.

Re:one should come up with numbers that make sense

[Nyeerrmm]

Usually you can get blogs delivered automatically for about $1-2/month, or you can access them via the internet app for free, and its not too much more difficult if you set up google reader or something like that. Magazines like Time and Newsweek are $1.50/month.

Re:one should come up with numbers that make sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Since you can put your own files on the Kindle, Amazon is not the sole source for Kindle content. I've had a Kindle for about a month now and while I've read 5 or 6 books on it thus far, only one was purchased from Amazon. Everything else has been free stuff that I've downloaded from other sites -- Project Gutenberg and manybooks.net, mainly. I've been reading Edgar Rice Burrough's Mars stuff, works by Jules Verne (some of which are hard to find in bookstores -- i.e., The Children of Captain Grant) and Alexandre Dumas.

Great Title

[EdIII]

When I read the 240M title I wondered where my Kindle was in the house and why I could not remember even buying it :)

Compromise on L

[EmbeddedJanitor]

240l of Kindles is approx 65 gallons.

Re:Compromise on L

[Ungrounded Lightning]

240l of Kindles is approx 65 gallons

But you can only get that if they blend.

Re:Compromise on L

[SetupWeasel]

They always blend.

Re:Compromise on L

[Anxiety35]

Don't breathe this!

Doesn't seem like that many

[darjen]

If I was an investor in Amazon, I would be upset that they are not releasing any numbers. I would certainly no longer hold a position in them. It looks pretty small when you think about how many devices Apple and Nintendo are selling.

Re:Doesn't seem like that many

[dgatwood]

Put in perspective, if the numbers I'm seeing on websites about iPhone sales are correct, this puts the kindle somewhere on the order of 10-20 days worth of iPhone sales.... Yeah, not that great. Book reading on an existing device is useful and a lot of people will do it. Buying a special piece of hardware whose primary purpose is book reading... definitely a niche market, particularly when it costs about twice as much as an iPhone (carrier subsidized) that does so much more....

Re:Doesn't seem like that many

[JakeD409]

The main advantage of the Kindle over the iPhone is actually the fact that it's not a phone; do you realize how high you jump when you're sitting in a quiet place deeply into a horror novel, and right at the scariest part, the damn thing RINGS at you?!

Re:Doesn't seem like that many

[Anonymous Coward]

Put into perspective the iphone sales are worth 5-10 days of nokia phone sales, but... why are we talking about phones?.

Re:Doesn't seem like that many

[Free the Cowards]

Welcome to Slashdot, where if you can't be the absolute best at everything, you might as well not bother at all.

Re:Doesn't seem like that many

[Strudelkugel]

The magic pricepoint is $50-$100. They would be wiser to make the Kindle as cheap as possible, then charge a bit extra for the download if necessary. The bandwidth to transmit a compressed book can't be that much. But $360 for the Kindle? No way.

Re:Doesn't seem like that many

[Anonymous Psychopath]

If I was an investor in Amazon, I would be upset that they are not releasing any numbers. I would certainly no longer hold a position in them. It looks pretty small when you think about how many devices Apple and Nintendo are selling.

As an investor, why would you care at all about how many units sold? It doesn't matter if they sold 240 or 240 million, it only matters how much they were sold for, how much it cost to sell them, and what that means to their overall cost and revenue structures.

Knowing that someone has sold X widgets at a sell price of $Y tells you absolutely nothing. Knowing that someone has sold $X in product with an average profit margin of Y% with a cost of $Z to run the company is helpful information.

Take a look at Amazon's 1Q filings and Google the terminology. The math is easy to understand and will tell you a hell of a lot more about what kind of risk you're taking than just looking at how many widgets have been sold.

P.S. My primary reading platform is an eBook device, and I plan on buying an eInk device of some kind this year, but the Kindle is so goddamn ugly I can't stand to look at it.

Re:Doesn't seem like that many

[Tonyrockyhorror]

I don't know what the standard of success should be for the Kindle, but "how well does it sell compared to the iPhone?" probably isn't it.

Re:Doesn't seem like that many

[Anonymous Coward]

Well it's not like Apple or Nintendo no, but it's a pretty specialized device. Works out to about one for every thousand people in the US so far.

You run into this any time you deal with a product that people buy once, and not everyone buys; pretty good sales sound lower than you'd expect. I first ran into it when my publisher said good sales would be over 30,000. I said WTF, then calculated the population of the US, UK, & Canada and realized that would mean 18 copies sold in a little 250,000 person city like mine, which would indeed be pretty good for a tech book.

Re:Doesn't seem like that many

[ksd1337]

If it's something with little competition though, then the price usually stays around one area. Then the number of units becomes more important than the price, because the price won't change.

Re:Doesn't seem like that many

[Achromatic1978]

Cause we have to, apparently.

And actually, Nokia sells more phones than the number of iPhones out there every 3 days.

Re:Doesn't seem like that many

[dgatwood]

Yeah, but not smartphones that would be capable of doing the equivalent of what the Kindle does. The general phone market isn't relevant for comparison. In the smartphone market, the iPhone is a pretty big player. Nokia's worldwide smartphone sales only outnumber the iPhone by a factor of 8 or so. (Source: Register Hardware)

Re:Doesn't seem like that many

[dgatwood]

I was thinking $40-60, but yes. Actually, IMHO, it tries to do too much with the whole EVDO data thing, resulting in a device that's overly feature-packed and expensive hardware-wise for a device whose software basically just lets you read electronic books. It's like putting a Cummins diesel in a golf cart. If they had made it a USB mass storage device at around a $50 price point, it would have been a much bigger hit, I think.

Re:Doesn't seem like that many

[LaughingCoder]

it tries to do too much with the whole EVDO data thing

Obviously you have had no experience with a Kindle. The EVDO is the "special sauce". I have owned one for 8 months and I love it. I use it every day. I am reading (buying) about 3 books a month (each book is about $6, best-sellers are more like $10, but I usually wait until they "age" a bit). Plus I shut off my newspaper ($30/month) and get it delivered to my Kindle instead ($10/month), so in the end my monthly outlay for reading materials is unchanged while I am essentially getting 3 books/month for free. So from that perspective, my $400 initial outlay (I was an early adopter before the price drop) will be paid for in 33 months. Anyhow, what makes this device really attractive to me is the (free) wireless. Being able to browse their book collection (which is substantial), download and read a few chapters (for free) anywhere, anytime, is extremely addicting. And being able to buy the book and be reading it in less than 30 seconds is a convenience I've grown to "need". In the morning when I turn it on, there is my newspaper - I don't have to boot the PC, connect the USB, do the "syncing" thing, it's just delivered automatically. Built in web-browsing for checking the occassional baseball score or my email is also a big plus. Yes, the hardware is a bit clunky (too many next page buttons - there is no place to hold the thing), and the industrial design looks like something from the 80s, but the battery lasts a good long time (many days if you turn off the wireless and just use it as a book) and the display is very easy on the eyes. Never having to tether to a computer is a really big deal for me - don't knock it until you've tried it.

Re:Doesn't seem like that many

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of comparison to the iphone...
I was wondering why we've heard so much about various iphone hacks, but not the kindle (even though the summary claims it runs a variant of linux). Anyone know if you can get source code from Amazon, recompile, or make new apps for it? Depending on what you want to do, it looks like a nice piece of hardware on which to play around.

Re:Doesn't seem like that many

[ChrisA90278]

"Put in perspective, if the numbers I'm seeing on websites about iPhone sales are correct, this puts the kindle somewhere on the order of 10-20 days worth of iPhone sales"

iPhones sales are slower then they would be do to very limited supply. Apple has plans to ramp up iPhone production to 800,000 units per week. This means every few days Apple will sell Amazon's entire run of Kindles.

I think the problem with Kindle is that it is a single purpose device. All it does is read books. And not even all books only Amazon's books. What it needs to be is a tablet computer the is specialized maybe to read books. That and it needs to be priced to the the user spends more on books them on the reader

Re:Doesn't seem like that many

[Sandor at the Zoo]

Check out the comments by Steve Pendergrast of ereader.com at some cranky blogger's site.

You're not seeing the data I'm seeing, like the dozens of people writing me and saying they dropped plans to buy kindle as soon as they saw ereader running on their iphone. The iphone is cutting the legs off of kindle sales even as we speak.

Re:Doesn't seem like that many

[Anonymous Psychopath]

As an investor, again, this doesn't matter. I don't care if you've sold a trillion units or one if you aren't making enough money on them for the stock price to go up or for dividends to be paid.

Re:Doesn't seem like that many

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when did Apple and Nintendo sell an eBook reader? Wow, THAT would be news!

Believed it

[ProfessionalCookie]

Funny thing is I nearly believed the 240k figure. I've barely heard a peep about the kindle since it launched.

Re:Believed it

[maxume]

You may have embraced the typo spirit, for the 240k figure is absolutely true, and there is no shame in believing it.

Talk about hearsay..

[NovaHorizon]

TechCrunch claims to have spoken to a source close to Amazon with direct knowledge of the company's sales figures.

.

My friend talked to his brother who knows a guy And said He has all the answers.

What the heck kind of Journalism is that?!..

Re:Talk about hearsay..

[NormalVisual]

I wonder if the source's name was Simone?

Re:It sucks that "K" and "M" are so close together

[ProfessionalCookie]

I knew who posted the story without looking

I hadn't thought about it but after reading your post I guessed correctly ;)

Is this source really reliable?

[H0NGK0NGPH00EY]

I read slightly higher numbers from a very reputable source:

âoeDear Customers,â begins the message from Bezos. âoeWe continue to be astonished at your insatiable hunger for Kindle: our earth-shattering nirvana delivery system.â âoeTo date, we have sold more than three hundred Kindles for every man, woman, and child on planet Earth,â the note continued, âoeThatâ(TM)s over two trillion Kindles in just six months.â

Amazon: Kindle is the greatest! Seriously, buy one RIGHT NOW! Kindle Kindle Kindle!

Re:Is this source really reliable?

[H0NGK0NGPH00EY]

Whoa, copy-paste madness. It looked good in the preview.

Let's try that again:

"Dear Customers," begins the message from Bezos. "We continue to be astonished at your insatiable hunger for Kindle: our earth-shattering nirvana delivery system."

"To date, we have sold more than three hundred Kindles for every man, woman, and child on planet Earth," the note continued, "That's over two trillion Kindles in just six months."

Re:It sucks that "K" and "M" are so close together

[Larryish]

I knew who posted the story without looking.

mdawson?

A little bit of marketing could maybe help

[Opportunist]

I am usually keeping an eye on Linux projects that have a certain size, but this is honestly the first time I hear about this.

Re:A little bit of marketing could maybe help

[tyrione]

I am usually keeping an eye on Linux projects that have a certain size, but this is honestly the first time I hear about this.

Really? I suppose you're not an Amazon customer or just a peruser? The damn thing is on every page of their site. It's marketing all over the stripmall.

27,000/month

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't believe that they are selling 27,000 per month. Sorry.

Not selling too well...

[russotto]

Especially when Bezos himself probably bought about 239,990 of them.

Welcome to Slashdot...

[Anonymous Coward]

where all discussions turn into bad jokes when numbers are off... or is it that nobody has anything to say about the Kindle?

Re:...and you call yourselves nerds?

[Firehed]

That's true in some markets, but in typical day-to-day use, k=thousand and M=million. There's only one other time I can recall 'MM' being used for million, and it was also in the context of sales/revenue.

It's like "milliard" - not technically wrong, but you'll confuse the fuck out of most people with it.

Re:OLPC?

[smittyoneeach]

Yeah, but it was 24K, so when you hit your 'OL PC with it, you know it's gonna leave a mark.

ugh

[bcrowell]

It's fine that a lot of people seem to like the thing. Reasons I'm not interested:

• $360 is way too much.
• DRM.
• The methods for importing PDF files sound like a hassle.
• The TOU say you can't sell or give away your books.
• There are only 145,000 books available. That sounds like a lot, but it's really not.

I can see how it could come in handy if you're on vacation and want to travel light, but IMO that's not nearly enough to overcome the negatives. I'll probably get an e-book reader in 2030 or something. There's no rush. First I want to see someone get it right.

Re:ugh

[od05]

The big market for these are textbooks, that's why I didn't get one. If they offered digital versions of textbooks at a discount price this thing would kill.

Re:ugh

[jeiler]

I'm surprised no one's come up with a "jailbreak" for it. A quick search on "Kindle hacks" shows that the firmware seems to be accessible, and one would hazard that replacing the DRM-laden reader with a free reader would not be excessively difficult.

Re:ugh

[Nyeerrmm]

I like your first statement. I must say, as a Kindle owner I perfectly understand your point of view. Here's the way I see it

1. The cost was fine for me, but I'm also a young guy with a decent job so I've got some disposable income.
3. PDF's can't transfer well because of the size of the screen... I do wish there were an easy way to read technical papers on it though, I dont see it until the E-ink comes down in price and improves durability though.
4. Again, I've got adequate money right now, if its a book I really like and would want to lend, I'm at the point now where I can give gifts or buy a copy to lend...
5. The selection is a little frustrating, but it also gives me a chance to find things I may not read otherwise. I just finished Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth, which I don't think I would have found otherwise, which would have been sad.

Now... for #2... I really wish they'd learn from the music guys. The simplicity of buying off the device itself makes it so that they shouldn't need DRM, and it being a smaller, generally more respectful market makes a difference as well; the small file size is the one difficulty. And of course the worst part is that unlike with music, theres no easy way to buy a book and rip it.

There are definitely some flaws, most notably the DRM issue, but since I still move around a lot and dont like having to carry boxes of books around, its great. Plus, I actually think its more comfortable to read than a book, since there are no awkward poses in bed trying to keep it open when your at the beginning or end of a paperback that simply does not want to stay open.

But saying all that, I can definitely see how its not for you or most people, and 240,000 seems pretty respectable.

Re:ugh

[icegreentea]

Well, the DRM is on the files isn't it? Your allowed to load whatever files you want (so DRM free pdfs, txts, rtfs or whatever), its just that the stuff you buy from Amazon has DRM on it. If such is the case, a Kindle Hack to remove the DRM components on the reader itself doesn't make sense.

Re:ugh

[jeiler]

My bad--for some reason I thought the Kindle would only allow the proprietary files from Amazon. Time to go to bed.

Re:ugh

[symbolic]

You forgot one - for a modern device in a culture that is bent on style, the kindle is quite hideous. iPhone, iPod, iMac, etc...though I'm not a big Apple fan (I do own an iPod), the style factor is why these things sell. The Kindle looks like it's still a prototype.

Re:ugh

[SputnikPanic]

145,000 available books within a year of the Kindle's release isn't too shabby, IMO -- better certainly than any other e-book reader that has come to market. And that number isn't counting all the stuff you can get from Project Gutenberg and other non-Amazon sources.

As for traveling light, I'm currently reading Cryptonomicon and next up will be Neal Stephenson's new book or Peter Hamilton's Night's Dawn Trilogy. Amazon has the whole trilogy (how many pages is that?) in one "volume." It sells for less than 8 bucks on Amazon, or about what I'd pay for the the first half of The Reality Dysfunction in mass-market paperback.

Re:ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

If you only read DRM-free books, that eliminates points 2, 4, and 5. Point 3 is true for *every* ereader just because the size of the display is too small for 8.5x11 pdfs.

That leaves point 1, on which I fully agree with you. The Sony PRS-505 can be had for $100 less, is much more stylish and has a bigger screen.

Re:ugh

[Dave Tucker Online]

In a way, I'm not sure you are wrong. It was my understanding that in order to display a PDF for example, it had to first be converted to their format.

Anybody know if this is true?

Re:ugh

[digitalgiblet]

I agree with all your points, really, but one thing that would convince me to buy a Kindle soon would be if they worked a deal with SafariBooks to let me access my safari subscription via the kindle for no extra money. To be able to get all those technical books in a convenient format would be a game changer for me. I'd buy a Kindle in a heartbeat. O'Reilley has been trying to work something with them, but so far they are only offering certain books in PDF format if you buy the book. To be fair not all the problems are on the Amazon side. O'Reilley doesn't own all the books on safari, so they have to negotiate usage rights.

Also, if I were to design my own eBook reader, it would work like a Nintendo DS. One screen would be the eInk screen and the other would be an LCD touchscreen. That way I could navigate the safari site via the LCD, then read the books via the eInk. Here's a kinky thought... what if I used my cell phone for the LCD navigation and it sent commands to the eInk eBook reader? Hmm...

The thing the Kindle got right was the wireless data. I'd probably have gone with wi-fi, but I'll give them points anyway.

Re:ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

In the tradition of worthless usenet (peace be upon it) posts, "Me too."

I was researching the Kindle last weekend and was all ready to shell out the $$$ for it, but then I read this:

http://defectivebydesign.org/node/1096

Sad. I'd like nothing more than to carry my library with me. However, I like to buy my books, not rent them.

I plan to give it another look when the Kindle is fully cracked and there are nice tools on Linux to export my books to it.

Re:ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

PDFs don't display well on eInk devices. They can be converted, and some devices even do it natively, but the end result is usually pretty ugly. I would very much prefer txt or rtf and let the device display it in whatever format is easy for it and for my eyes. I'm not sure if the Kindle natively displays these formats, but Sony's ereaders do.

Re:ugh

[left_coast]

If you want to go the DRM route you can share the books with up to 6 other kindles on your amazon account. Also there are books from project gutenberg and other places that you can load onto your kindle. I use mobipocketreader to translate a pdf into a prc file for the kindle - works like a charm. I have well over 100 books that I have replaced from my personal collection and have only had to purchase a couple. The biggest problem for non-kindle owners is the fact that they can't see/touch/play with a device in a store - you have to fork over your money and see what you get. In my case I even bought a second one for my wife. I built a library on an 8 gb sd that we use to load what we need onto our individual kindles. Works great.

Re:ugh

[gad_zuki!]

I also dislike this device. I would salivate if they:

1. Got rid of EVDO and just gave me wifi

2. Lowered the price to $100 or so.

3. Let me easily copy PDFs, cbr, etc.

I understand the appeal of an EVDO device that automagically downloads books, but thats a small niche at this price. I should not have to pay 400 dollars just to get started. Also, I'm not an image conscious person, but christ, that this is ugly. It looks like a daily planner from Sharper Imager circa 1986.

Re:ugh

[bcrowell]

The big market for these are textbooks, that's why I didn't get one. If they offered digital versions of textbooks at a discount price this thing would kill.

Paper, printing, and binding are usually not a significant percentage of the cost of a textbook. Digital textbooks might have the advantage of cutting out the campus bookstore as a middleman, but I suspect that the publisher is not going to let the student have the money that would have gone to the store (typically about 27%). Another issue is returns, and the ability to buy and sell used copies, which probably wouldn't be possible.

Re:ugh

[miserere nobis]

I understand the appeal of an EVDO device that automagically downloads books, but thats a small niche at this price

A small niche? The price pushes it out of range of many, but the automagical EVDO download is precisely what makes the niche so much larger. WiFi would be nice to have in addition, but instead?

WiFi is a pain in the neck unless you are on your own network, because you have to a) find a hotspot; and b) perform setup operations of some kind to connect to it. Those are things you might expect to do on a laptop, but you really don't want to worry about it with your book. Do you really want to have to somehow figure out how to connect to Boingo's network or whoever the local provider is, on your Kindle, the next time you're in an airport and want to grab a new book to read on the plane? By the time you pay for your one-time Internet access fee, just to access a service on which you can peruse books you haven't yet decided whether to buy, you might as well wander into the airport bookstore instead.

The beauty of this is that it is not reliant on WiFi (nor therefore on the arbitrary choices of network settings, means of acquiring any necessary access codes, and fees of whoever, if anybody, is providing WiFi where you happen to be sitting at the moment).

Re:ugh

[Blakey Rat]

You forgot one - for a modern device in a culture that is bent on style, the kindle is quite hideous. iPhone, iPod, iMac, etc...though I'm not a big Apple fan (I do own an iPod), the style factor is why these things sell. The Kindle looks like it's still a prototype.

I think the Kindle has a really slick, cutting-edge look!

On a related note, I just woke up from a 20-year coma; can somebody tell me how to get this "Amazon" thing on my Commodore 64 so I can buy some bad-ass New Kids on the Block cassettes?

Re:ugh

[602]

There are only 145,000 books available. That sounds like a lot, but it's really not.

Of the 27 books that I've read in 2007-2008, 4 are available on Kindle (this stat as of March 2008). Your mileage may vary.

Re:ugh

[ucblockhead]

Yeah. I bought an Asus Eee 900 recently for $440, and read one of the Tor free PDFs on it. It made a nice reader. Telling the PDF reader to rotate into landscape and turning it on the side puts one page at a time on the screen, and you get none of the refresh issues you have with eInk, and all on a device that is light and has good battery life. I took it with me on vacation and not only used it as a reader, but also to check google maps for directions to restaurants, etc. The only downside was the screen can't be read in direct sunlight.

In my mind, until a reader has real support for PDFs (i.e. displays them natively) and pages in a 250 msecs, I'm not interested.

Re:ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

The Sony PRS-505 is not crippled by DRM, has a surprisingly long battery life, easily imports any of the thousands of excellent digital books available legally or illegally, and natively supports numerous formats.

Why anyone would buy the Kindle is beyond me, but e-book readers are realistic today.

Re:ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

It's fine that a lot of people seem to like the Internet. Reasons I'm not interested:
- $2000 for a computer and $600 a year is way much.
- No one can call you when you're on the Internet.
- It's not possible to save the Internet so you have to be connected all the time.
- There are only 145,000,000 pages available. That sounds like a lot, but it's really not.

I can see how it could come in handy if you want to send an electronic letter to someone across the globe, but I don't know anyone like that so in my case this doesn't come close to overcoming the negatives. I'll probably get on the Internet in 2030 or something. There's no rush. First I want to see if it goes anywhere.

Richard, 1998

Obligatory

[PhasmatisApparatus]

240K ought to be enough for anybody.

Re:...and you call yourselves nerds?

[megaditto]

You work at McDonald's?

Re:Doesn't seem like that many... But

[jwiegley]

Buying a special piece of hardware whose primary purpose is book reading... definitely a niche market

Yeah, but... I've been on Holiday in London for the past month. I take the tube (when it's actually running) everywhere and I've got to say the US$700 I spent on my iRex iLiad and about US$100 worth of novels has been a godsend on the train. The batteries last all day, bright light only improves the readability and much more portable than a laptop.

It may be a niche market but it has potential. Unfortunately, the only way this potential is going to be achieved is if the corporate players get their collective heads out of their ass and standardize on one, decent, open, portable format.

They also have to port previous works into an electronic format. Try to find Robert Ludlum's books on mobipocket format. You can't, at least not the pre-death publications. Dale Brown? "Oh yeah, let's pick every other book to publish." What idiot does that. If I'm going paperless then I'm going paperless.

DRM is tolerable but there's no reason you can't have an open format that supports DRM.

The people that dreamed up these different formats have done such a poor job it's not funny. PDB don't support different typefaces. PDF's don't reflow. HTML isn't going to support DRM and you need to zip to capture multiple files. Kindle isn't compatible with anybody else, lit is closed. While I find mobipocket tolerable try accurately converting any of the others to mobipocket. They're all just a kludge. Concepts of "paragraph", "chapter", "lists" and "Table" all are meaningless in these formats and essential concepts for reflowable layout. Basically, a quick experience in trying to convert formats and you will quickly understand that the people who designed these "formats" know nothing about capturing and encoding information.

Until they get a clue eBooks are dead in the water. (And I like mine, that should tell you something.)

Amazon wants Kindle to fail?

[DeathSquid]

Books are cheap in the U.S. and people have a lot of room to store them, so Kindle is definitely a niche product in its domestic market. However, in other countries books are expensive and often space is at a premium. Kindle offers huge advantages, and would be wildly successful in these markets.

How does Amazon respond to this market need? They refuse point blank to sell kindle devices or media to anyone outside North America.

Sure, whispernet is NA only. But a USB connection works just as well...

What sane company ignores its largest potential market? And when it does, the writing is on the wall. If I was a shareholder, I would be livid.

So the only question that remains is why Kindle is being set up for failure? Simple incompetence? Xenophobia? Or something more subtle?

Re:Amazon wants Kindle to fail?

[dargaud]

However, in other countries books are expensive and often space is at a premium.

Exactly. I give away all my books after reading them because I have no space to store them. Add this to the fact that I read in english in a non-english speaking country, it adds up in terms of postage stamps to get them shipped here. I've been waiting for years for a good e-ink device. I have high hopes for the next version of the Kindle...

Re:Amazon wants Kindle to fail?

[gilgongo]

I'll take a guess that it's nothing to do with any of that. The name "Kindle" gives you a clue if you know anything about the historical relationship between publishers and distributors. Burning books. Basically, publishers hate (and I mean hate) distributors. Not only does distribution means high costs, it means massive restrictions on what publishers can publish. Poetry? Philosophy? Not a hope in hell: if it doesn't sell within a week, those tiny shelves need to be stacked with some crap that does. Lowest common denominator wins every time.

The kindle is ray of hope that publishers have been waiting for the past three hundred years: a way of getting stuff to their readers without the damn logjam that is distribution.

Re:Amazon wants Kindle to fail?

[SputnikPanic]

So the only question that remains is why Kindle is being set up for failure? Simple incompetence? Xenophobia? Or something more subtle?

Yeah, xenophobia, I'm sure that's it. Amazon would rather not have any non-American mitts on the Kindle because ... because what, the board is made up of folks who wouldn't be able to sleep at night knowing that Australians or Brazilians or Italians were using their precious Kindle? My god, the very thought of it must make them quake!

Don't you think that Amazon is salivating at the prospect of cornering the international e-book market? Sure, it may be tiny now but that's a market that's only going to expand. I'm certain that Amazon would love to be in the UK, Australia, and a whole host of Asian countries, but maybe they have sound business reasons for not introducing the Kindle into those countries yet. Maybe they're negotiating with carriers to make some sort Whispernet available there. Amazon has a lot to gain if the Kindle succeeds internationally, so they must have SOME legitimate reason for keeping the Kindle US-only for now.

Re:Amazon wants Kindle to fail?

[ahabswhale]

So they sell $100M in product and that's a failure to you? Are you fucking retarded? These unofficial numbers would make it the most successful eBook reader in the U.S. by far.

As for selling outside the U.S. ...that's complicated. First there's the whispernet issue which isn't available everywhere and may be cost prohibitive for them to acquire in many countries, then there's the contracts they have with the publishers.

It's just not that simple. I'm sure Amazon would love to sell it everywhere but things aren't so easy.

Linux on the desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

So, finally, this is the year of Linux on the desktop! (hidden under your stack of other books, of course)

Did anyone but me buy one of these?

[RenderSeven]

It is overpriced, underwhelming performance, and absolutely the coolest damned thing Ive bought in ten years. When I can fight off the kids over the rights to pry it from my wife's hands, its just a blast to use. Ive now read more Terry Pratchett on the Kindle than in dead tree form. And the kids find all these great direct-to-electronic format books from micropublishers. OK so it didnt live up to my plan to download all my PDF tech manuals. And it may only have a 100k books available, but they seem to be the 100k books I wanted to read. And the web browser is fair to passing, and access to wikipedia works just peachy, and Amazon picks up the wireless charges. I take back some of what I said about Bezos...

Re:Did anyone but me buy one of these?

[Tom90deg]

I got one, and frankly, I loves it. First some background. I'm a medical student, who's abroad for school, so I can't take a ton of books. And I love to read, so I had a bit of a problem, re-reading the same books over and over again.

The Kindle has been great. It's small enough to fit in one of the pockets of my bag, so I take it everywhere, and it always gets people looking at it, saying how cool it is.

It's not without problems though, since I'm overseas, I can't use the coolest part, which is the FREE internet. And that makes me sad, but it's ok, i can buy books and transfer them to my Kindle.

Oh, and to all the people who say it's ugly...Yes. Yes it is. But it's ugly like a stealth fighter, or a Tank. It's not a shiny plastic and steel thing, but it looks like it means bisness. It's there to do one thing, and it does it very very well.

Re:Did anyone but me buy one of these?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. It's only available in the States. I can say for sure they would be able to sell at least one more if they made it available where I am.

Re:Did anyone but me buy one of these?

[itof500]

We bought ours before our trip to Japan this spring, paid for with part of President Bush's economic stimulus check. What an amazing machine. We loved it on the trip, and when we got back home realized we needed another so we weren't fighting over it. Thank you GWB.

Duke out

We are being played

[Anonymous Coward]

Its time to stop believing these unnamed sources. For instance, consider this scenario. Say, I work for Amazon marketing and would like people to believe that the Kindle is more successful than it seems. I cannot announce inflated numbers - that might get me into trouble with the SEC. Why not leak inflated numbers to a new outlet, as an unnamed source? Its perfect! In the absence of real data, the public will believe the leaked numbers. If it contradicts the truth, and the truth comes out, nobody needs to be held accountable, because it wasn't official.

I think its safe to say that if it were selling well, Amazon would be shouting it out from the rooftops. I saw a demonstration unit with a friend who was evaluating it for a review, and my impression was that in a world where people use iPhones and Razrs, the design of this leaves much
to be desired.

Its certainly possible that 240K people bought it. However, I'll believe it when Amazon says it.

This is a Linux disaster

[shlompo]

This project, as long with several others, show that the only commercial consumer success of Linux, are integrations of it in other products. Every hardware that goes out with a linux kernel, and proprietary software should not be viewed as a success for Linux, but only for the technology of a monolithic kernel that runs on anything. The purpose of Linux is greater though, and it is not served by these projects: peoples freedom remains unprotected, they still use proprietary OSs and remain ignorant of other alternatives. My point is: this post should not be under "Linux"...

Re:This is a Linux disaster

[Gavagai80]

It's a linux success. You're talking about GNU. It's not filed under GNU.

Re:This is a Linux disaster

[shlompo]

Success to the kernel as a technology, but not to what it tried to bring to the world... even if you put aside GNU, this headline shows that the linux kernel is good for integrations for small products, but does not push it into the mainstream kernel usage, PCs, where it wants to go. Only a few posts back you have a statistic that linux is 2.4% of the PC market in England... my point was that the technology does not breakthrough the same barrier it has for many years, just keep getting better at the same things, although, most of the efforts in the linux kernel, go into the mainstreaming of it, not to make it better for embedding (at least is most parts of the work in the kernel).

consider this: ten years from now, would you like the world to be covered with proprietary OSs, with linux only on your kindle and mp3, or have it everywhere, unleashed, like it was meant to be? I personally would like to see linux take over the PC market, and unless we as a community keep investing our resources in that direction, we will not reach that goal. So I'm pointing this out as a community service...

First filing!

[iceeey]

Amazon.com is first to file sales figures online on Slashdot, according to the new SEC policy!

Re:Doesn't seem like that many... But

[CountBrass]

The problems I have with ebook readers are:

1. I could buy a lot of paperbacks for the same money.
2. There's no restriction on the books I can read. First the book has to have been scanned and then it needs to be available in a format the ebook reader understand. In contrast to a book which just has to be in a language I understand.
3. I don't mind leaving read novels behind when I've been on holiday in order to save weight.
4. I can lend books to family and friends.
5. Books don't need batteries.

In contrast I can only see one advantage, although a big one, in using an ebook reader:

1. A loaded ebook reader weighs much less than the equivalent stack of paperbacks.

Re:Doesn't seem like that many... But

[blackdew]

But you can't make DRM work on any open format!

If you (as a developer) know enough about a file to render it, you can easily save it into any other (non-drm) format.

DRM and OPEN are two absolutely mutually-exclusive concepts.

Is the number actually 24,000?

[Anonymous Coward]

"According to this unnamed source, Amazon has sold 240,000 Kindles to date"

Is the unnamed source the public relations department trying to get rid of unsold Kindles?

I'm skeptical. Does the unnamed source benefit financially from the sale of Kindles?

It's the Slashdot culture, and it works, sometimes

[Futurepower(R)]

When Slashdot readers don't believe the story, they make jokes and talk about off-topic issues.

Textbooks?

[Digital_Quartz]

Correction; they refuse to sell the devices outside of the USA. I can't buy one up here in Canada.

There's lots wrong with Amazon's marketing strategy; some kinds of books in the US are expensive, such as text books, and much of this cost comes from their limited runs. Publishing these books to the Kindle would eliminate much of the cost associated with publishing overhead. This would also stop poor students from having to lug a hundred pounds of textbooks around with them.

Textbooks are also a perfect choice for this sort of medium, as it is not uncommon for text publishers to make updates and refinements to their texts as errors are found or new breakthroughs are made. While you can't make updates to an existing paper book (aside from using a pen), it would be easy to distribute patches for eBooks.

So where is Amazon's textbook store?

Re:Doesn't seem like that many... But

[kabocox]

Until they get a clue eBooks are dead in the water. (And I like mine, that should tell you something.)

I love the concept and really can't wait to get one myself. My problems is their wanting me to spend a $300-400 on a single purpose device that usually only reads their chosen format. Sure the display is great and the batteries last a long time, but I'd rather spend a few more for a laptop that can read and convert nearly any format that I happen to have. When I can spend $30-50 and get a brand new one and not a "used" or ebay one, then I'd reconsider picking one up. Until then, I'm sticking with reading on my PC.

Re:Doesn't seem like that many... But

[joebok]

I bought a Kindle last week - after months and months of thinking about it. I have read eBooks on many many devices - from my trusty old Palm III to Clie's to iPAQs and now the Kindle.

As a reading experience - the Kindle blows them all out of the water. I'm pretty sure any eInk device would - it is great. Battery life, readability - awesome.

The reason I dithered so long was the DRM issue that has plagued eBooks from the start. What finally brought me over is that Kindle format is MobiPocket and it is possible for me to read my protected MobiPocket books on the Kindle. From comments I've heard from Amazon in terms of security and lock down, they seem realistic (if not even encouraging) of the kind of hacking that will make MobiPocket a defacto open, but DRM format. Kind of like the iTunes and Apple business.

I've not had trouble converting other formats to mobipocket (mobipocket provides software to do it, and Amazon has a service that will convert things to mobi format) - but I'm not really a stickler for getting tables of contents working. I read novels on my Kindle: I don't look at TOCs in real books any more than the Kindle - so it works great for me.

Anyway - I am hopeful that I have seen a sea change in the eBook DRM attitudes and that things will get better. If not, well, after a few years I'll have yet another handheld device to put in my box of dead toys.

now I can read my kindle while riding my Segway

[Anonymous Coward]

the chicks will love me

Re:now I can read my kindle while riding my Segway

[owlstead]

At least those over 55 years of age.

For values of "always"...

[Anonymous Coward]

... which do not include Chuck Norris.

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=NdD54rG9oQA

How many are in Bozos basement?

[blackjackshellac]

That is what I want to know, hey jeff, how many have you scooped up yourself?

It could be more than million

[Ilgaz]

It could pass million easily if Amazon wasn't stupid to make it USA/Canada(?) only.

We, foreigners are the ones who sees absurd things like $20 book having $40 DHL posting price. Not Americans. I think they even send it free or something there.

Move to digital, spend millions to research and make it USA only. Who to blame this time? Is there a MPAA/RIAA in book scene? Will they still whine about pirated e-books?

Non-backlit

[Aerynvala]

My main issue with eInk is the lack of backlight. I use the eBookwise Reader which is very basic in its functionality. But the backlight allows me to read it in whatever light I'm in.