Amazon’s Key Role In The Electronic Book Arena
The recent surge in the popularity of both e-books and e-book readers has been heavily influenced by Amazon. The Amazon Kindle reader first appeared on the market in November of 2006 and further updates followed with the launch of the Kindle 2.0 in February of 2009 and the release of the upgraded third generation Kindle in August 2010. The large display Kindle DX was released in the summer of 2009 and also had an upgrade in August 2010.
A great many industry analysts suggested that, notwithstanding the influential role of Amazon in the development of the e-book reader market, the release of the Apple iPad would signal the demise of the Kindle reader. However, following the release of the latest third generation Kindle, accompanied by a price cut, Amazon is, once again, out of stock of Kindles. It seems that consumer demand is still extremely high for Amazon’s top selling product.
For some people, the change to e-books has been easy to accept. Others seem to love physical books as much as they love reading. However, for most people the ability to carry large quantities of reading material around with them, coupled with the ease of operation offered by e-book readers, has proven to be an attractive proposition. Recent reductions in the selling price of e-book readers, possibly brought about by the iPad’s launch, have sweetened the deal sufficiently for many readers.
Amazon recently announced that they are now selling more Kindle books than traditional hard cover books. The lower sales price of e-books – which use no paper or ink and have no delivery fees to speak of – certainly helps. It’s not too much of a stretch of the imagination to envisage that e-book sales will soon outstrip paperback sales.
Apart from the price, the ease of purchase of e-books is another driving factor. Readers can download a book to their Kindle in under a minute, whatever the time of day, just as long as they can connect to the Amazon Kindle store.
One potential area of concern for many prospective customers was a reluctance to be “tied” to one particular brand of e-reader. Amazon seem to have overcome this rather nicely by releasing an absolute plethora of free “apps” which allows Kindle books to be read on a variety of different devices. At the moment, Kindle books can be read on the PC, the Mac, the iPhone, the iPad, the Blackberry smart phone and any device which runs the Android operating system. It’s a smart move by Amazon. It not only removes customer’s concerns about being tied to one proprietary piece of hardware but every new app acts as a seperate point of sale for Amazon’s vast library of Kindle books. Currently, approximately 20% of all Kindle book sales are destined to be read on non-Kindle hardware.
All things considered, it looks like e-books are here to stay and that they will gradually account for a higher and higher percentage of book sales. It also looks likely that Amazon will remain as one of the driving forces in the digital publishing arena for some time to come.
