Used Books Blog

Kindle sales have doubled, or so Amazon would like to have you believe. A recent Time story reported the following:

According to a source at Amazon, “on a title-by-title basis, of the 130,000 titles available on Kindle and in physical form, Kindle sales now make up over 12% of sales for those titles.”

In late May at the D: All Things Digital Conference, Tim O’Reilly reported Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos saying that “kindle sales represent 6% of all Amazon sales for the 125,000 titles that are available on kindle.”

The problem is that these percentages are delivered in a vacuum. There is no indication as to true sales figures. Here’s the issue in a nutshell for those who are statistically challenged.

Let’s say the the 6% figure was based on 1,o00,000 unit sales. That means Kindle sales accounted for 60,000 units. The 12% figure could be based on another time period where unit sales were, say, 800,000. 12% of 800,000 is 96,000 unit sales. So while the percentage of sales rose 100% from 6% t0 12%, actual unit sales only rose 60% from 60,000 to 96,000.

For what time period is each percentage based? Is the 12% figure cumulative? (If so, the June percentage would have to be massive!) Are these based on revenue or unit sales? These are just the basic questions. Never mind the more detailed analysis of unit sales per Kindle, repeat Kindle sales and median channel sales percentage.

It’s hard to believe that investors are willing to take this type of sales obfuscation. We still don’t know how many Kindles were sold! Oh, they were sold out, but it’s a real easy marketing trick to create buzz by selling out a small line of inventory.

You have to ask yourself, why won’t Amazon actually divulge any of the sales data. If it were as great as they make it seem wouldn’t they be shouting it from the rooftops Tarzan style?

Credit Tim O’Reilly and Time’s Josh Quittner for not blindly reporting these ‘figures’ as a success. In particular, I enjoyed Quittner’s opening volley.

Is the Kindle starting to catch fire with consumers? From the Department of Inscrutable Data Points comes word that e-book sales for Amazon’s Kindle — its digital reading device-have doubled during the past two months. Kind of, sort of, maybe.

Others have been less rigorous in their analysis, seeming to trust Amazon on faith and hoping that another iPod like success story is in the making. Convince me Amazon! Just show us the numbers.

Textbook Torrents is using BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol, to let students download textbooks for free. The site not only allows Torrents for those open textbooks but allows users to scan and upload other textbooks.

Scan as many of your other textbooks as you can, and put them up here for others to benefit from. There aren’t very many scanned texts out there, so let’s change that.

A basic rule of thumb to determine if something is acceptable: if you can find it in the courses section of your local university bookstore, it’s fair game.

Sites like Textbook Torrents are reacting to the increasingly high cost of textbooks. According to a 2004 CALPIRG study, the average textbook costs $102 and students spent almost $900 a school year on textbooks. Many believe these prices are artificially high, creating windfall profit centers for publishers on the backs of students who essentially must purchase these textbooks.

The used textbook marketplace has flourished because of these high prices, though the shelf life of a textbook seems to be decreasing as publishers crank out updates and editions on a more regular basis. The Amazon Kindle is also delivering textbooks via digital download.

It’s no surprise that students are using new technology to defray the cost of their education. Obviously the textbook landscape would collapse if the majority of students sourced their textbooks via Torrents - authors need to be compensated, publishers need to run a business.

But publishers shouldn’t squawk too much about these developments. High textbook prices were the accelerant to the flux in the textbook market. Now they’re scrambling to protect their cash cow in the encroaching digital age.

Textbook Torrents Update (July 14, 2008 - 2:00pm)

As noted by readers, the textbooktorrents.com website is currently offline. The error data (”not found on this server”) makes me believe that the owner took it down or that the host (DreamHost) took it down. Please note that Google still has pages from textbooktorrents.com in their index. Google hasn’t banned the site, it’s simply not ranking high because there’s no longer any relevant content on these pages.

I’m guessing this disappearing act is due to legal pressure brought by publishers. The domain doesn’t expire until January 2011. Perhaps textbooktorrents.com will come back when a new host is secured … or not if the publisher pressure was simply too much to handle.

Textbook Torrents Update (July 14, 2008 - 2:57pm)

I emailed DreamHost in what I thought would be a vain attempt to gain some information on the Textbook Torrents situation. To my pleasant surprise, DreamHost responded to my inquiry within the hour. Below is the text of that email:

We received very long DMCA takedown notices from publishers of the content in question. The site was further closed down due to violations of our Terms of Service due to it’s illegal facilitation of the distribution of copyrighted content without the copyright owners consent.

While I sympathize with students and the cost of textbooks, you can’t fault DreamHost for pulling the plug. Based on the information provided above, I’d be surprised if any major US host would touch Textbook Torrents at this point.

The 2008 Kids and Family Reading Report by Yankelovich and Scholastic contains some interesting statistics that may provide insight about the future of books in the digital age.

• 75% of kids age 5-17 agree with the statement, “No matter what I can do online, I’ll always want to read books printed on paper”
• 62% of kids surveyed say they prefer to read books printed on paper rather than on a computer or a handheld device.

Those are some pretty shocking(ly good) statistics given the prevalence of online media and handheld devices. I’ve blogged previously that eBooks and the Kindle have an uphill battle because of the passive nature of books and the lack of a motivating agent of change for the medium. Books are already portable, can be printed in color, and don’t get better due to new technology (e.g. - Dolby or HD.)

To be fair, there does seem to be a place for digital books.

• Two thirds of kids age 9-17 believe that within the next 10 years, most books which are read for fun will be read digitally – either on a computer or on another kind of electronic device. Eighty-seven percent of kids think people will be able to tag and share their favorite parts of books with others.

So perhaps there is room for both eBooks and the musty regular old book. The problem may be whether the digital book market can be a large enough and viable business.

Ready for some more good news?

• A majority of kids say they like to read books for fun and that reading books for fun is important. Most kids perceive a correlation between reading and success.
• One in four kids age 5–17 reads books for fun every day (high frequency reader), and more than half of kids read books for fun at least two to three times a week.

A part of me doesn’t believe these statistics given all the doom and gloom you often hear about reading and literacy. But the study was done to a 90% confidence level. It’s gratifying to see books still being linked to success.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS), which tracks the progress of more than 20,000 American schoolchildren from kindergarten through the fifth grade, showed a correlation between the number of books in a child’s home and their test scores. This was referenced in Freakonomics and also cause for some sniping regarding correlation versus causality.

The crux of the report was this finding:

• A child with at least 50 kids’ books in his home, for instance, scores roughly 5 percentile points higher than a child with no books, and a child with 100 books scores another 5 percentile points higher than a child with 50 books.

Yet, there was no correlation between a parent reading to the child and test scores. This led many to believe that books, and the number of books, in the home wasn’t the primary factor, but instead was linked to the parent’s income and education.

I find that a weak argument for a couple of reasons. The first being the difference in scores between 50 books and 100 books. If you believe this argument, then the parents of the 100 book group are richer and better educated than those in the 50 book group. I’d be surprised if this was the case. It would have been a major finding in the report had this been true.

The second reason is that the environment has so much to do with a child’s growth and development. Akin to the Montessori idea of the prepared environment, it makes sense that having books around greatly increases the chance that they’ll seek them out on their own.

Parents reading to their child might not be correlated to success, but having access to books for children to seek out and explore on their own makes sense. You could be rich and intelligent parents, but if you’re feeding your kids a diet of Halo 3 on a daily basis you might get some odd results.

So how am I linking these two reports together? I know, it seems like a stretch, right? Here’s how.

• Most kids say there are not enough really good books for boys/girls their age, and they say finding books they like is one of the key reasons they do not read for fun more frequently.

This important statement comes from The Reading Report, making it clear that finding books is a key to reading. The odds of you finding books is far higher if you’ve got them in your home.

The Reading Report goes on to show the dramatic effect Harry Potter had on reading habits and attitudes. Again, I’d offer up the question: would a child be more or less likely to read Harry Potter if the books were in the home?

Yeah … parents, buy more books.

Citigroup Analyst Mark Mahaney predicts that Amazon will generate between $400 million and $750 million in Kindle revenue by 2010 based on a to-date Kindle sales estimate of between 10,000 and 30,000. TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington does a nice job taking the Mahaney report and extracting the relevant points. In particular, the issue is the slim amount of public data on the Kindle. The $64,000 question … er … $400 million dollar question is just how many Kindles have been sold.

Here’s how Mahaney arrives at the 10,000 to 30,000 range.

How Is Kindle Doing So Far In The Marketplace?

Our ability to answer this question is very limited. Amazon is the sole retailer of the Kindle and it has disclosed no information about its sales other than to say that it sold out in the first 5 1⁄2 hours. But we have pieced together four different clues to gain a sense of Kindle’s traction.

First, we note that Kindle has consistently been ranked among Amazon’s Bestsellers in its Electronics category. Ahead of the Apple iPod Nano, the Garmin GPS Navigator, and the Canon Powershot Digital Camera.

Second, we note that the Kindle has received a very large number of customer reviews. Per the exhibit below, we note that Kindle has received more customer reviews than any of the other Top 10 Bestselling items in Amazon’s Electronics category – 2,537 reviews as of May 12th – vs. 663 for the Apple iPod Nano 4 GB Silver (3G), the #2 Bestseller. This is in part an unfair comparison. Kindle is a new product sold only on Amazon.com, while there are numerous versions of the iPod, and they are sold by numerous retailers. But still, the volume of reviews does indicate material traction for the Kindle.

Third, we see that the quality/tone of the customer reviews the Kindle is receiving is relatively positive. Below we compare the Star Rating Diffusion – 5 Stars vs. 4 Stars vs. 3 Stars etc… – for each of the Top 10 Bestselling Electronics Items on Amazon. What we see is that the Kindle actually receives fewer high scores than the other Bestsellers – 69% of its reviews are 4 or 5 Stars vs. an average of 80% for the other items. And it receives more low scores than the other Bestsellers – 22% of its reviews are 1 or 2 Stars vs. an average of 13% for the other Items. But for a Version 1 of a product “competing” against a several times iterated leading consumer electronics item like the iPod, a 69% Star 4 or 5 rating is relatively positive.

And fourth, we note that the most reviewed Customer Review of Kindle (“Why and how the Kindle changes everything” by Steve “eBook Lover” Gibson) has been reviewed by at least 27,000 people. Specifically, as of May 13th, 26,931 have read Steve Gibson’s review and actually commented on it by pressing the Yes or No button when asked if the review was helpful. And logically, there would be more people who read the review and didn’t bother to vote, although the voting step is hyper-easy. We believe that this helps provide something of a proxy for how many Kindles have likely been sold. We’d peg the number as somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000 Kindles sold to date.

I’m glad Mahaney speaks to the fact that the Kindle is only sold at Amazon which would boost it’s standing for both bestsellers and customer reviews. However, using the review rating number as a proxy for Kindle sales seems shaky. It is hyper-easy and there’s a lot of vitriol around Amazon, eBooks, DRM that could encourage this type of ‘monkey click’ behavior. I’m not saying Mahaney is wrong because he’s very smart and is most often correct. I just don’t think this is as much an indicator given the buzz and inherent troll behavior on the Internet.

The model Mahaney uses is based on the iPod adoption curve, but using a smaller base and discounted substantially. Clearly, any type of adoption even half as successful as the iPod would be a massive success. The problem (for me) is that I view the iPod and Kindle as very different, and am concerned that the initial rush of sales was far more indicative of a gadget obsessed innovator segment and not representative of how it would translate to the other stages of the innovation adoption curve.

You can read the details of my argument against large Kindle adoption, but in general I simply don’t think reading has nearly as large a market as music; reading is active rather than passive; the portability issue isn’t nearly as troublesome; and the reading market is, in general, less inclined to adopt these new technologies based on an aging demographic.

The one place I can see large adoption would be within the textbook market. Not only would Kindle Textbooks be a boon to Amazon and students, it would groom a whole new generation on the medium in which they read books.

When do you read? Seriously, with all the things competing for my time I often find it difficult to sit down and read, hence the recent brownout in this blog. Sure, I could have posted some other small bits of news or observation but I still feel that the main reason why you’d read the Used Books Blog is for the book reviews. And I’m a big proponent of quality over quantity, so I’m not going to just go back in time and write paragraph reviews of the hundreds (thousands?) of books I’ve read in the course of my life.

The main reason I have less time now is that I’m no longer commuting by BART (SF train/subway system) into the city a couple of times a week. The half hour ride each way meant I could get in two to three extra hours of reading each week without breaking a proverbial sweat. Don’t fret, I’m not out of work, just working from home a lot more than usual. That leaves me reading before I go to bed and … sadly, I’m just not reading anything that has kept me awake longer than 10 pages a night.

This current brownout also occurred because I started and didn’t finish two books - VALIS by Philip K. Dick and Preston Falls by David Gates. The former was going to be a Retro Review, timed with it’s prominent appearance on the television show Lost.

I’ve read VALIS once in college for a Science Fiction course. (Yeah, it sounds cool but wasn’t as much as you’d think.) I began re-reading it for the review and again found it … interesting but maddening (no pun intended) at the same time. I don’t care what other Philip K. Dick fans says, this isn’t his best work. I will review VALIS in the near future.

Preston Falls on the other hand just never really grabbed me and I had problems connecting with the main character, a New York City Ad Man in mid-life crisis getting drunk and shooting things in upstate New York. I rarely put books down, and I hope I return to Preston Falls but my bookshelf is full of other interesting material.

But I digress.

When do you read? Turns out there’s not a tremendous amount of information on this topic but I did manage to dig up the following statistics from the National Literacy Trust in the UK.

• A survey of 1,000 people for Bedtime Reading Week 2002 found the most popular place to read was in bed (65% of the sample). 25% relax with a book in the bath, 10% take a book to the loo (mainly men), almost half like to read on holiday and a third read on the journey to work. Over a third of those interviewed said they wish they had more time to read.

• An online survey of 1,432 workers, by the TUC for Quick Reads and World Book Day 2006, found that … 55.3% find the time to read for leisure during their lunch breaks. But it is a lack of time for 62.1% that stops them from reading more.

There’s a lot to digest in those stats (like whether waterproof books might increase reading) but at the end of the day it seems that time is our enemy, something all of us seem to have less of despite technological advances. Perhaps it’s the active nature of reading, versus passive nature of TV, Film and Music, that makes reading a bit daunting for even die-hard readers.

So when do you read?

Welcome to the Used Books Blog Year in Review sponsored by John Barth. That’s right, not meta-fiction but meta-blogging.

The blog began in late June as a way to stay connected to books and to learn more about search engine optimization (SEO). I struggled at first with WordPress but got the hang of things and began to post regularly. An interview with Fine Books & Collectibles helped launch the blog, for which I am very grateful. I also received support and links from many booksellers, as well as colleagues at both Alibris and Abebooks. Again, a hearty thank you for your kind words and assistance.

I took a hiatus from the blog soon after because I just didn’t have enough time to write good reviews. I was busy at work, heading up the launch of Santa.com. I did, however, have plenty of time to read as I commuted on BART. So I have returned to the blog with a stack of books to review and plans to post on a more regular basis.

So what exactly worked and didn’t work for the Used Books Blog in 2007. Thankfully, search did work! Nearly 50% of traffic came from search engines - primarily Google. The terms that drove the most traffic were:

• Used Books
• Barnes and Nobel
• Kindle Sales

I’m also receiving traffic from a number of odd terms like ‘blow job decal’ and ‘blow job short story’ because of my review of Magical Thinking. Thank you Mr. Burroughs. (A pity sarcasm doesn’t translate as well in writing!)

Referring traffic was good but should be better so add me to your blogroll and we can swap links. I also explored Digg, StumbleUpon, Facebook and numerous other venues to increase the exposure of the blog. I’ve got plenty of ideas, just a shortage of time. Don’t we all these days.

Outside of more referring traffic my goal in 2008 is to produce interesting content and increase comments. So don’t be shy! Leave a comment, whether it’s one sentence, a paragraph or an essay.

Happy New Year and happy reading in 2008!

Perhaps the title of O.J. Simpson’s If I Did It should be Will You Buy It?

Barnes and Noble has already decided not to stock the title, while Border’s will stock it but “will not promote or market the book in any way.” Though, clearly the media controversy will do the promotion for the book.

The Current Events editor at Vizu thought this was a good topic and ran a poll that asked the following question:

How likely are you to buy OJ Simpson’s “If I Did It” book when it hits stores?

The results (with over 100 responses and counting) indicate that 4 out of 5 polled will ‘definitely not’ buy the Simpson book. I’m guessing Barnes and Noble may have done similar research and decided that the potential demand (low) wasn’t worth the potential consumer backlash (high).

However, what people say and what they do are often very different. I’m guessing there would be a big difference between action and deed surrounding Nicholson Baker’s Vox. Usually I’d say that anything that gets folks to read is a good thing, but I’m hoping this goes into the remainder bin right away.

What about you? Will you buy Simpson’s If I Did It?

More and more movies seem to be based on books. I take this as a good sign in many respects, but I often wonder if people are actually reading these books. Did everyone read Ludlum’s Bourne Ultimatum before scurrying to the theater last weekend to see Matt Damon? (As an aside, could the careers of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck be any different?!) Now, I haven’t seen the newest Bourne, but then again I rarely see things in the theater now that I have a toddler. However, I haven’t read any of the Bourne series thus far, and can’t see myself doing so prior to seeing the latest installment.

But that doesn’t mean that I don’t see the merit in reading a book before seeing the movie. There are a number of books that you simply must read before you see the movie. It would be a crime if you watched Breakfast of Champions before reading the book. Actually, it might be a crime to simply watch that movie. Look at what Kevin Costner did to David Brin’s The Postman … if you can. And what of any of the Philip K. Dick movie translations?

There are some movies which can stand on their own, that you wouldn’t need to read the book to enjoy. The House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus, III jumps to mind, but I’d be one of those who would annoy theatergoers and say ‘but the book was better.’ I’d be right though.

So as the editor of the lifestyle category for the Vizu network, I ran a poll that asked the question: If based on a novel, do you like to read the book before seeing the movie?

• 45% said it would depend on the book/movie
• 31% said yes
• 19% said no, they’d just see the movie
• 5% said no, they’d just read the book

I was pleased that only 19% said they’d just see the movie, and think it bodes well for the continuing power of the written word. Out of nearly 500 responses, 4 out of 5 indicated that they would read or consider reading the book before seeing the movie.

I’d fall squarely in the ‘it depends’ category since I wouldn’t read a Grisham before seeing a movie adaptation, but would certainly read Everything is Illuminated prior to seeing that film. I’ d like to see Jarhead, but won’t until I read the book. Some, I won’t even see the movie because I don’t want the version I’ve created in my head to be in any way changed. A recent example of this would be The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

So let’s get some chatter going, what movie adaptations would you never see? Which ones would you need to read the book prior to seeing the movie?

Is reading going the way of the do-do bird? Are we becoming a culture enthralled only with gadgets and gizmos, iPods and YouTube? I often hear alarming factoids that indicate that books and reading are on a severe decline. According to the following undated statistics from the Jenkins Group, you’d think the dark ages were returning and that every precaution should be taken to preserve our tomes.

• 1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.
• 42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.
• 80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.
• 70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.

On the other hand, you can’t help but notice that bookstores, once small and cozy have been transformed into two and three story palaces, installed in every half-way decent mall. Or what about Oprah’s Book Club and the incredible success of Harry Potter? Something just doesn’t cotton here!

Thankfully I’m in a position to do a bit of research and launched a poll across a network of 100+ sites and blogs. The question: Do you read books for pleasure? A whopping 82% said yes, which is both promising and comforting.

However, as with any research or statistic there are caveats and ways to interpret the numbers. The biggest one here is that the online population is skewed toward those with higher education and income. So, it’s not cut and dry, just like a great poem.