Good news for E: ‘Publisher "stunned" by Kindle sales’
“Evan Schnittman, head of biz dev at 35,000-title textbook publisher Oxford University Press, says a pal at one of the ‘biggest trade publishers in the world’ called him this week, shocked at how well Kindle-formatted books had sold in December, just after the Kindle’s launch.” - Richard McRoskey, Silicon Alley Insider
The TeleRead take: That’s not all. SAI further reports that Evan looked at royalty statements “which he said ’stunned’ him: He had expected to sell up to 200 Kindle titles in December, but says the real numbers were ‘an order of magnitude’ more than that.” What he isn’t sure about is if the roll will go on. Also, keep in mind that Oxford in the past was doing digital sales only to libraries (although, yes, Oxford also supplies some terrific books to the ad-supported Wowio service, such as a first-rate Mencken bio).
While I’m displeased by Amazon’s use of a special Kindle format, actually just tweaked Mobipocket, I am delighted over the success of the machine—since other brands will bask in its glow. In fact, Oxford seems likely to get books into Sony format. Now wouldn’t it be great if the IDPF’s .epub format were around as a standard. In fact, ideally, the forthcoming Adobe software for the Sony PRS-505 firmware update will be able to read .epub, as we currently expect—not just the proprietary BBeB format.
(Thanks to Peter Brantley.)
March 1st, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Well, I think the writing is on the wall now, and the future is clear:
1. Sony failed with the Reader to make the ‘iPod of ebook devices’ — but Amazon succeeded.
2. Amazon’s proprietary format will be the AAC of ebookdom, whether we like it or not (I don’t). I hope the free-and-open zealots can code some translating software for it.
3. Ebooks have at last arrived. The Kindle is IT. Now Amazon has to hope that their suppliers can crank up the eink-screen production a lot higher than it’s ever been in the past.
We can all rejoice that ebooks now are here. But it’s a shame that the standard is not open, and that the device itself is so closed.