That's Amazon honcho Jeff Bezos as quoted in the NYT (reporting on the introduction of the NOW! Bigger! Kindle DX).We see that when people buy a Kindle, they actually continue to buy the same number of physical books going forward as they did before they owned a Kindle. And then incrementally, they buy about 1.6 to 1.7 electronic books, Kindle books, for every physical book that they buy.
Amazon reports rather impressive sales of Kindle-books, especially given that the article states there are probably fewer than 1M Kindles in circulation as of today. And yet, people who buy the Kindle (a device whose chief benefit would appear to be the avoidance of buying dead-tree books that the buyer has to lug around, store, and etc...) keep right on buying dead-tree books they have to lug around at the same rate as before...they simply supplement those with some Kindle-books.
Are these gift books? Do these buyers understand what their Kindle does (and that it does more than calculate tips)? Particular authors that are not available on the Kindle for some reason? What possible explanation can there be (if we assume that Bezos is being completely open about the underlying stats and isn't simply mistaken on some point). Seriously, this seems to me to be the key moment of the whole presser but it's reported without too much note.
But this admission does go a long way towards explaining why Amazon decided to put out a Kindle reader app for the iPhone: it's unlimited upside to them. If they sell a Kindle once you've read some of their books on the iPhone (and presumably discovered that you could read on the little screen after all, but decide you would prefer to do so on a Kindle for one reason or another) then it's even more profit for them. But, if you don't make the leap to their device, you're still apparently going to buy just as many dead-tree books as you ever did, plus some number of Kindle-reader books for the iPhone.
Vaguely unbelievable, but apparently true.
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