Can Oprah Save Kindle?
Oprah endorses Kindle. OMG! Stop the presses. OMG! This is huge. OMG!
Once again, Amazon is trying to create buzz around Kindle and show that Kindle can do for books what the iPod did for music.
Yet, what does Oprah’s endorsement say about the success of Kindle? To me it means current marketing efforts have been less than satisfactory. (Hey, I’m trying to be kind.)
It tells me that Amazon couldn’t leverage their massive base of loyal customers. They couldn’t drum up enough demand by marketing it on their home page continuously for six months. Amazon couldn’t do it by using the largest affiliate marketing program on the Internet.
So Amazon, needing a good holiday season for Kindle, resorts to Oprah. For good or for bad, Oprah is perhaps the largest influencer in books, particularly now that J. K. Rowling closed out the Harry Potter series.
Aside from the Oprah stamp of approval, the endorsement came with a $50 off coupon code. What does that tell you about the price point of Kindle? It’s too expensive!
Remember, Amazon hasn’t released any sales numbers for Kindle. One could argue that Kindle isn’t contributing enough to be reported as material. Yet Amazon’s third quarter results do include references to Kindle title breadth (still a puny 185,000) and Kindle title sales as a percentage of total format sales (more than 10%). So is Kindle material or not? Or is it only material when the numbers look good?
If Kindle were selling like hotcakes Amazon would be beating their chest about it, wouldn’t be crawling to Oprah and wouldn’t be providing a $50 coupon code.
The Internati want Kindle to succeed in the worst way, building projections that Amazon finally had to come out and refute as being extremely high. On the flip side, University publishers and the New York Times have both made less than stellar comments and references about volume.
Kindle 2.0 won’t be out until some time in 2009 and there is still no indication that a textbook Kindle is in the works. Again, if Kindle was a clear success, new versions would have been fast tracked. Now Amazon has to deal with Stanza for iPhone and potential for competition from Google.
Can Oprah save Kindle?
October 31st, 2008 at 8:10 pm
I use to work in a book store and it always made me shake my head when ever Oprah endorsed a book. I hope this time it blows over
November 1st, 2008 at 10:37 am
Holly,
Yes. I have mixed feelings about Oprah’s book club. I like the fact that she promotes reading, yet … I’m unsure that many read anything BUT what she recommends. Her selections are often solid but there is so much more out there that should be read. It puts quite a bit of power in the hands of one person.
January 25th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
If the Kindle wasn’t a success then why is taking 4-6 weeks to order one?
I bought my daughter one (an avid book worm) and she loves it.
January 25th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Joe,
Being ’sold out’ only means that they ran out of supply. What was that supply? No one knows and Amazon will not (under any circumstances) say either.
There have been plenty of rumors about manufacturing problems and … those make sense. When has a mall ever started producing a product without any hiccups?
Would you expect eBay to start cranking out some type of gadget?
Nearly every other data point … points to poor results, not wild success. Here’s a recent post that covers some of this.
I’m thrilled your daughter is a book worm - we need more of ‘em - and that she loves her Kindle.
But I’d be prepared to switch to a different platform and device in the future.
February 12th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
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April 16th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Jump to conclusions much?
January 27th, 2010 at 2:22 am
I had my kindle dx delivered last month. And must say I am pleased as a punch LOL. I did some research on bing and also asked my friends for feedback. Finally bought it from Kindle Store. They had a discount coupon and I got $25 off. I am so pleased with it after having downloaded digital media from Amazon - all of them were free! I just love it!