An amusing look at Amazon's Kindle.
I swear to my book-loving God I do, and, yes, I know for a fact he/she loves books because the bible has sold more than five billion copies since 1815, which I'm pretty sure is better than even JK Rowling, not that I mean any disrespect at all ... to Ms. Rowling.
But something about this whole Kindle craze just doesn't figure.
We're still in so-called "trying" times. Things are still supposed to get a lot worse. Layoffs have hit nearly every industry, including book publishing, kids are writing tragic letters of loss and heartache to Santa Claus, and Jay Leno is moving to prime time because "with the economic situation a lot of people go to bed earlier."
Ok, so I have NO idea where Leno got that little factoid about how the onset of poverty improves sleeping habits, but the stuff about the layoffs and the Santa letters has been verified, and yet Amazon.com has somehow managed to SELL OUT its entire stock of Kindles at a cost of $359.00 each!
It's revolutionary. It's cool. I get all that. I've held one, used one, envied a person who owned one but ... How? Why?
And if the answer is simply the fact that Oprah Winfrey touched a Kindle and said it was good, then somebody get that woman to Wall Street, give her a megaphone and get out of her way!
In the meantime, I'll just have to envy those who have Kindles, marvel at all the books they can carry all at once, and hope that soon they'll be carrying mine in there too.
— TJ Sullivan in LA
* Cross posted at LA Observed
We really don't know how many Amazon even produced to begin with, so being sold out might not mean much of anything except that Amazon is pretty bad at hardware production, supply chain and inventory management.
ReplyDeleteAnd what makes you think that they're really sold out? Lets face it, Amazon has been less than forthcoming on Kindle statistics. And what better way to keep the buzz going than to claim victory for Kindle before the holidays? No bad sales figures to explain away.
Here's my analysis of the Kindle being sold out:
http://usedbooksblog.com/blog/christmas-kindle-sold-out/
Plenty more Kindle related posts there too, a good rebuttal to the overwhelming fanfare.