If the Internet seemed slow last Sunday, it might have been because around the world, literally millions of new e-reader owners spent a fair part of the day downloading e-books.
It's too early to know exactly how many e-readers were sold this year as holiday gifts. But on December 5, Amazon announced that its customers had been purchasing Kindles at the rate of more than 1 million per week -- for the past three straight weeks.
Barnes & Noble was expected to take delivery on 1.1 million Nook Tablets and 400,000 Nook Colors during 2011's fourth quarter, according to a DigiTimes report, which adds that "the vendor has set a target to order 4.0-4.1 million 7-inch Nook Tablets" for 2012.
And in the UK, "At just £89, the all-new Kindle... was by far the biggest selling product of the festive period," said Christopher North, Managing Director of Amazon.co.uk Ltd. "As a result, Christmas Day will be one of the biggest sales days of the year for Kindle books as people turn on the device and download their favourite title in under 60 seconds."
When it comes to filling their new e-readers, most new owners will go to the source. Logically, Kindle owners will head straight for Amazon; Nook owners will shop at Barnes & Noble. These two mega-retailers alone offer readers their choice of many hundreds of thousands of e-books.
Because of the sheer number of titles available, these online superstores are easiest to navigate when readers know exactly what they want to purchase. But for e-book readers who aren't sure what they're looking for, there are a growing number of websites that focus solely on e-books, striving to make the online e-book buying experience as relaxed and enjoyable as browsing in a physical bookstore.
Of these, Super E-Reads.com is unique. Super E-Reads doesn't sell books directly to readers. Instead, the website collects, or catalogs e-books. On each e-book's catalog page, readers can enjoy author interviews, watch a book trailer, read an excerpt of the book and see what reviewers have to say -- then click through any of the multiple direct buy links to the online retailer appropriate for their reading device when they decide to make a purchase.
Many of the titles listed on Super E-Reads were previously published in print. Some are former New York Times bestsellers. Thanks to electronic self-publishing, the authors of these books are able to make their out-of-print titles available to readers once again as e-books.
Others are written by authors who have elected to bypass traditional publishing altogether. Darcie Chan's New York Times and USA Today bestselling Mill River Recluse, which tells the story of a wealthy Vermont widow who bestows her fortune on town residents who barely knew her, and Sam Winston's What Came After, a post-apocalyptic adventure in a desolate and treacherous world, are two examples of the excellent books featured at Super E-Reads which are currently available only in "e."
"What appeals to me as a reader," says author Barbara Taylor Sissel about the Super E-Reads online catalog, "is the way the genres are listed right there on the main page, with no confusion. The whole website is streamlined and professional, very straightforward and easy to navigate. And with one click you have such a variety of information, all in one spot."
A typical e-reading device has room for between 1,000 and 5,000 e-books. Which means that whether their new owners shop at the large online retailers, or seek out alternative websites like Super E-Reads, there's going to be plenty of quality downloading time for e-book readers in the days ahead.
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To me, the audio book is superior in every way.
I wish we could get more audio releases faster and less expensively.
There are mitigating circumstances here: Mom gave up reading a long time ago and it was a pure pleasure experience when she discovered she could read her favorite newspapers on line a lot easier than the old-fashioned print hard copy. She has, among other things, Parkinson's Disease, and the shakiness in her hands makes it nigh well impossible for her to even sign her own name these days. I don't think Mom has put her Kindle down since the day we started loading it with books. In short, the e-reader (in this case, Kindle) has given her a big chunk of her life back. I'm not sure just exactly why, but the Kindle (and the ability to change the size of print) has negated the effects of the trembling in some fashion (not to mention just flat out easier to read since you can change the size of font). For that, I'm profoundly grateful to Amazon (and all other e-reader inventors, by the way). (Audio books tend to put her to sleep.) So there is a place for all kinds of media when it comes to reading pleasure. (Don't forget: I was one of those really skeptical people, too.)
I can see that. Although reading tends to put me to sleep these days!! I like your point about changing Font sizes. I like mine small and my wife is getting far sighted so she uses reading glasses.
First, I fall asleep during them! They take me somewhere else so efficiently that I lose the necessary tension to stay awake that reading itself provides.
Second, it's easiest to go back and look at previous pages on a real book, harder on an e-reader, and hardest by far on an audiobook.
Third, it's a lot easier to not quite hear something right than it is to misread a word. I say that as someone without hearing or vision problems.
It all comes down to audiobooks demanding more effort to concentrate on.
Some probably don't mind getting distracted for a moment on an audiobook, or falling asleep for 10 minutes, and missing things, but I do.
Plus, I can store a thousand books on a kindle. I can't store 1000 audiobooks on an MP3 player.
I will say that I'd rather have an audiobook at the dentist! And that as light and easy to carry and hold as e-readers have become, they can't compare to how tiny and light an MP3 player is.
While doing my research, I saw that several books I wanted were cheaper (one book was $6.00 cheaper) on the Amazon Kindle, as compared to the Nook.
Some people would say its only $6.00, but those $6.00 dollars add up when you purchase 4 or 5 books in succession.
Don't make a decision based on what one or the other of them has on sale this week. Look over the reviews of the devices and compare and contrast their abilities. I choose a nook because it allows me to get books from Sony, Apple, Google, etc. The Kindle does not read anything but books from Amazon (thus once you buy one you are locked in to buying books at what ever price they set). E-pun readers (Sony, Nook, Kobo) all allow you to comparison shop.
The answers and the non-caring (I don't care if you buy one or not) attitude I received from B&N made the decision for me.
I will purchase a Kindle, forget B&N.
THe one major drawback I see with super ereads is there are no prices listed. Because the prices of e-books change so often (sometimes they are free or steeply discounted for only a day or two) I prefer the deal hunting sites such as http://the-cheap.net/ and http://kindleonthecheap.wordpress.com/
Over 100,000 HarperCollins UK e-books were downloaded on Christmas Day: http://www.thebookseller.com/news/hc-christmas-day-downloads-top-100000.html
And from Amazon's latest press release: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1642935&highlight=
More Kindle holiday facts:
Throughout December, customers purchased well over 1 million Kindle devices per week.
The new Kindle family held the top three spots on the Amazon.com best seller charts – #1: Kindle Fire, #2: Kindle Touch, #3: Kindle.
Kindle Fire is the #1 best-selling, most gifted, and most wished for product across the millions of items available on Amazon.com since its introduction 13 weeks ago.
Kindle is also the best-selling product on Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.es and Amazon.it this holiday season.
Gifting of Kindle books was up 175 percent between this Black Friday and Christmas Day compared to the same period in 2010.
Christmas Day was the biggest day ever for Kindle book downloads.
Kindle Fire is the best-selling product on Amazon.com’s mobile website and across all of Amazon.com’s mobile applications.
Hooray for readers!
Wow!!! Just announced: Winds of Wildfire is a finalist in the Sharp Writ Book Awards. organized by Smart Book Lovers, a high IQ Society.
Then back in 2008 Time of Triumph was a Finalist in the New Mexico Book Awards. Can you hear the thunder and clamor to read this guy? Check it out! Visit www.timeoftriumph.net
Amazon Review
“Ronald Chávez writes with the pace and feel of a Michael Crichton thriller and the frankness of Walt Whitman. The imagery of Chávez’s New Mexico is breathtakingly distinctive.”
And I can testify to a tremendous level of sales in the last week. After making my political thriller free for a day on Kindle, I saw 8500 downloads! Then sales boomed once it was in pay mode again. Suddenly it's a bestseller...
It's an exciting time to be a writer.