Amazon announced in their ever-familiar web store juggernaut way that their book-reader–the Kindle–is overtaking hardcover book sales by a whole lot more than some people care to admit.
Over the past three months, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 143 Kindle books. Over the past month, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 180 Kindle books. This is across Amazon.com’s entire U.S. book business and includes sales of hardcover books where there is no Kindle edition. Free Kindle books are excluded and if included would make the number even higher.
- source: amazon press release
Let me sum it up: Amazon has sold 143% as much digital books as hardcover books. Can you imagine if they had included free Kindle books? If you went out and picked up a $189 book reader, you certainly aren’t a cheapskate, but who doesn’t like free? It seems that Amazon has become for books what iTunes was/is for music. You can finally put all of your eggs in one big Amazon basket and not have to worry about your devices and data becoming obsolete anytime soon.
However, there is still one big, undeniably annoying difference, and that is DRM (Digital Rights Management) and its firm clutch on your copy of the book. Now, before you check out on me for being a digital rights freak, hear me out. When you first got your hands on a copy of The Hobbit or Pride and Prejudice, how did you do it? Did you borrow it from a friend, or a relative? I know I did. What if your friend couldn’t loan you their copy because they had to keep it on their bookshelf in order to read Harry Potter? If that were the case, you probably never would have gone on to buy the Lord of the Rings trilogy, or found out that you liked Sense and Sensibility way better.
With the Kindle, you buy a book, read it on your device, and keep it there forever. You probably won’t lend your friend the Kindle, since you’ve had your nose buried in the latest Twilight book and you can’t let go. When you find a book or an author that you like, how are you going to share it with a friend? I personally hate to tell my friends to go out and gamble their hard-earned money on something they might or might not like, knowing that they probably won’t unless I beg them to. The portability just isn’t there like it is with hardcover books.
Please, don’t read this as “Kindle is evil, down with Amazon!” That is not the message I am trying to get across. I just want you to think before you go down a road you might regret. As an aspiring author, I can’t help but wonder what this will mean for me if I ever try to publish. Sure, I could self-publish on the Kindle, but what will happen when my readers want to share my book with someone else? I can only hope that Amazon will have come up with a solution by then and you will be spreading your favorite author’s works to everyone you meet.
These ideas are not original. I practically stole them from a favorite author of mine, Cory Doctorow. Please read more about the other side of the anti-copyright movement in the download page for his book Makers. Heck, you might even want to download the book for free and see what he’s all about!
Comment (1)
i totally understand! i have a few kindle books and i regret not purchasing that actual copy because i would like to use them as a reference and flip through the pages…or let a friend borrow.