How to Protect PDF Today Blog

Even although Amazon are being unashamedly coy with regard to sales figures, there can be no doubt that they are more than satisfied with the performance of their Kindle ebook reader family to date. The mark one Kindle went on sale in November 2007 and demand was so high that it sold out in less than 6 hours. It stayed out of stock right up to April 2008.

The Kindle 2, widely considered to be an improvement to an already successful product, was released in February 2009 and was another great success with the Amazon customer base. In May of 2009 Amazon announced that its new, larger Kindle DX would be released and started taking pre-orders for shipping on June 10 2009.

All things considered, by the middle of 2009 the Kindle was the must have gadget and was often referred to as the “iPod of books”. Meanwhile, in parallel with the development and marketing of the device itself, Amazon continued to add to its library of Kindle titles. By early June of 2009 there were in excess of 300,000 Kindle titles on offer and the collection was growing by, on average, 500 books per day.

Great business for Amazon and a huge driver for repeat custom. Sure, you can get books for your kindle elsewhere – but these might require translation, and why bother when the Kindle store has so many volumes that you can download using 3G wireless connectivity in less than sixty seconds?

It’s also good news for all those third party manufacturers of kindle accessories – a rapidly expanding market. Amazon originally included a cover with the first Kindle, but discontinued this practice when the Kindle 2 was launched (no great loss perhaps as many users didn’t like the cover and sought alternatives anyway). Customers who have just shelled out $359 for their Kindle 2 or $489 for their DX probably don’t think anything about spending another $20 – $40 on a protective sleeve for their expensive new toy. Like any portable kit, it’s sure to come in for a few bumps and scrapes in use – it makes sense to protect it doesn’t it?

Apart from the practical aspects, it appears that some Kindle owners are quite happy to pay over $100 for a nice leather cover – which will not only provide some level of protection but will also make their high tech Kindle look more like a “real” book. As the Kindle is a fairly high ticket item most owners, will have some disposable income so it probably isn’t a great surprise that they’re ready to pay for a few extras to customise it.

Kindle owners can also select from a wide variety of other items – clip on lights, metal reading stands and power chargers are currently popular. As the popularity of the Kindle continues to expand, and as even more new models are brought to market, it seems likely that more and more independent manufacturers will profit from Amazon’s success.

The original Amazon kindle ebook reader was released in November 2007. It sold out in less than 6 hours and remained out of stock until April 2008. It’s probably fair to say that even Amazon was shocked by the immediate success of the device.

The updated kindle 2 went on sale in late February of 2009 and it was widely considered to be a significant improvement on what was an already successful product. Among other improvements it boasted a better battery life, more rapid page turns, a text-to-speech facility (it reads text to you) and enough storage for roughly 1500 books in its on board memory (albeit that the option to use an external SD card, a feature of the original kindle, was no longer available).

Just 3 months later, in May of 2009, Amazon announced that its kindle DX would be launching in the summer of this year. The DX features the majority of the principle features of the kindle 2 but has a larger 9.7” display, which incorporates automatic rotation between portrait and landscape views. Also featured, for the first time in the kindle range, is the ability to display native pdf files without the need for conversion.

The larger size of the kindle DX makes it well suited for viewing newspapers, magazines and academic coursebooks. A number of major newspapers announced – even before the DX went on sale – that they would offer reduced prices for the kindle to anyone signing up to annual subscriptions.

Amazon are keeping their cards very close to their chest – but it’s thought that somewhere between $86 to $96 million of kindle reader sales were made between November 2007 and August 2008. Don’t forget, that’s just the electronic device – the sales of electronic books need to be considered separately. Industry insiders are predicting that kindle sales (again just the hardware) will reach $ 1.6 billion by 2012.

Fantastic business for Amazon – and a significant move away from only marketing other supplier’s goods to having their own product to bring to market. More importantly though, whilst not exactly tied in, kindle users will be heavily motivated to provide Amazon with a level of repeat business that other online shopping websites can only dream of.