Wednesday, February 20, 2008

What Does This Say About the Number of Kindles Sold?...

Earlier this month Jim LaRoche of HTMPublishing used his BlogBook tool to convert the archives of my Publishing 2020 blog into a trio of Kindle downloads. I stop by the archive product pages on Amazon from time to time and today I noticed something odd: My 2007 archive is currently #3 on the Kindle list of New Business Enterprises titles (note that the list will probably change by the time you click that link, which is why I captured the screen and included it in this post). OK, sure, that's a pretty narrow shelf definition, but #3?! And only two slots behind Crossing the Chasm?! If that isn't odd enough, the same archive is also #9 on the Technology list, one slot ahead of Electronic Projects For Dummies.

So is this archive file a runaway bestseller? Of course not. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure this is just another sign of the very small number of Kindles currently in use today, which probably means you only have to sell 2 or 3 copies of a product to appear on one of these lists.

2 comments:

Jason Marcuson said...

It appears to say a lot, doesn't it? That's a bit sad.
I guess the alternative though was to wait until Kindles really take off, then catch up to it with solid reporting. The reporting appears to be in place. The success of the Kindle, however, does not. Not yet anyway.

Joe Wikert said...

Hi Jason. Say, if I didn't know you I'd wonder if you are just busting my chops with your comment. Come to think of it, since I *do* know you, I'm pretty sure you're busting my chops! ;-)

Seriously, the only thing that's preventing the Kindle from taking off is availability. If they could ever have some inventory on hand to ship out immediately (just like they do with most of their books!) there would be many, many more people out there using the darned thing.