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The Kindle Skews Amazon's 2011 Best-Seller List
destinyland writes "Amazon's released their list of 2011's best-selling books, revealing that 40% of the best-selling ebooks didn't even make it onto their list of the best-selling print books. The #1 and #2 best-selling ebooks of the year weren't even available in print editions, while four of the top 10 best-selling print books didn't make it into the top 100 best-selling ebooks. 'It couldn't be more clear that Kindle owners are choosing their material from an entirely different universe of books,' notes one Kindle site, which points out that five of the best-selling ebooks came from two million-selling ebook authors — Amanda Hocking and John Locke — who are still awaiting the release of their books in print. And five of Amazon's best-selling ebooks were Kindle-only 'Singles,' including a Stephen King short story which actually outsold another King novel that he'd released in both ebook and print formats. And Neal Stephenson's 'Reamde' was Amazon's #99 best-selling print book of 2011, though it didn't even make it onto their list of the 100 best-selling ebooks of the year. 'People who own Kindles are just reading different books than the people who buy printed books,' reports the Kindle site, which adds '2011 may be remembered as the year that hundreds of new voices finally found their audiences.'"
I've been having the exact opposite experience. I don't have a kindle, but I use their app on my phone, and have for quite a while now. But in the last year, every time I go to buy a Kindle book, it's ~$15, and the hardcover version is $3.99 shipped. Or it's not available on the Kindle at all. Most recently, this was the case with three Iain M. Banks novels-- two shipped from the UK, and they were still only a couple dollars apiece, in hardcover.
This isn't Amazon's fault-- the publishers won their fight to set pricing. And they're pricing themselves right out of a sale. When the Kindle was new and ebooks were almost always cheaper than printed books, I bought quite a few. Now I'm buying books used again. The publishers have cut off their nose to spite their face, and in their fear of low-margin ebooks have lost their margin entirely.
I don't think he's saying ebooks are cheaper in a general sense, he's saying that cheap ebooks are outselling the more expensive ebooks, which is what is skewing the results. I know I would never go to the bookstore (or even the library) to get a short story and very rarely a novelette, but I've gotten several on my Kindle because the price was right ( $1 ) and their customer ratings were high. So yeah, the Kindle does change my reading material, but that's because A) I refuse to pay $10+ for the ebook edition of a book B) I also refuse to buy a physical copy of a book (yeah, I know blasphemy, whatever. I significantly prefer the convenience of ebooks over paper). And that leaves me with a very different group of books that are in my acceptable price range.