Shop Talk

from MediaFile:

Why won’t Amazon say how many Kindles it’s sold?

Something about returning from the Christmas holidays makes people want to show off what they received – a new sweater donned, a new gadget subtly pulled out at meetings, a few extra pounds padding the belly.

Jeff Bezos doesn't like this tradition. He will hint at the generous present that consumers gave to Amazon in the form of surprisingly strong sales, but he won't offer details.

Bezos wants you to know that his Kindle – the e-book reader that has done a remarkably good job surviving in the age of the iPad – was Amazon's “bestselling product of all time.” How many Kindles did Amazon sell? We don't know because Amazon isn't saying.

What Amazon does say is that the third generation of the Kindle surpassed even the number of Harry Potter 7 books it sold. Which is kind of disingenuous because Kindles are sold primarily through Amazon, while Harry Potter books are available in nearly every bookstore. But it does offer a hint: Some 5 million copies of Harry Potter have sold on Amazon since 2007, one analyst estimates.

Usually, analysts step in to offer sales figures that Amazon won't. But in the case of the Kindle, they can't seem to agree. One reckons Amazon has sold 5.4 million Kindles in 2010, while another pegs that number at 8 million.

Either number is impressive, so why doesn't Amazon share it? Over on Quora, a former Amazon employee suggested it's because the disclosure would help Amazon's competitors. But nobody sells Kindle's but Amazon, and few e-readers are even close to it in sales, unless you count the iPad.

But the iPad is a tablet, and the cheapest version of the iPad costs four times Kindle's $139 price tag. Besides, Apple makes a point in bragging about how many iPads, iPod Touches and iPhones it sells each quarter, and it only seems to fuel sales.

Check Out Line: Borders launches e-bookstore … finally

Check out Borders Group finally launching its e-bookstore.

The No. 2 U.S. bookstore chain’s electronic bookstore comes nine months after rival Barnes & Noble debuted its Nook e-reader and three months after Apple introduced its popular iPad tablet computer, allowing both companies, and Amazon.com, which sells the Kindle e-reader, to get a head start.

No worries, says Borders, which saw sales at its namesake superstores open at least a year and on its website fall 11.4 percent in the first quarter.

“We’ll take market share just by turning it on,” said Mike Edwards, president of Borders Inc, the company’s main operating business.

Edwards said Borders had data and email addresses for the 38 million customers in its loyalty program and about 700 stores at which to promote its virtual bookstore, which will help it catch up. The company’s goal is to secure a 17 percent share of the e-book market by July 2011.

“A lot of people have said, ‘You’re kind of late to the game,’ and I’m saying, ‘the game actually just started,’” Edwards said.

However, larger rival Barnes & Noble recently said it has already won 20 percent of the U.S. e-books market since launching Nook, exceeding its share of the physical book market.

from MediaFile:

Hey Woot, its Amazon. You’re rich.

You gotta figure that every web entrepreneur waits (prays!) for a call or email that goes like this: "Hey dinky but popular outfit with a loyal customer base -- super-huge company here. We want to buy you and make you rich. Have a nice day."

Woot.com got a call like that from Jeff Bezos's Amazon.com. They announced the deal on Wednesday. It's speculated that Amazon paid about $110 million for the company that sells only one item per day at discounted prices, until inventory runs out. The next day, it moves on to another item such as you know, a water gun or a home pedicure kit.

Already, Woot is playing a part in the e-book reader price war between Amazon and its Kindle, and Barnes & Noble and its Nook, by selling Kindles cheap. (But sorry,  It sold out before many of you woke up.)

The deal opens up a monstrous growth opportunity for the suburban Dallas outfit. But it doesn't appear to have taken the starch out of the company's irreverant CEO Matt Rutledge, who told employees that they should continue doing what they do best -- whatever that is.

We plan to continue to run Woot the way we have always run Woot – with a wall of ideas and a dartboard. From a practical point of view, it will be as if we are simply adding one person to the organizational hierarchy, except that one person will just happen to be a billion-dollar company that could buy and sell each and every one of you like you were office furniture. Nevertheless, don’t worry that our culture will suddenly take a leap forward and become cutting-edge. We’re still going to be the same old bottom-feeders our customers and readers have come to know and love...

If that doesn't give you an idea about the kind of shop Amazon is picking up, perhaps the video above -- which, ahem, features a rapping monkey puppet -- will. Oddly enough, this crazy-like-a-fox energy reminds us of another clip showing a bunch of wacky young Internet entrepreneurs  giggling about their startup's pending acquisition by a super-huge company. That would be when Google bought Youtube. For $1.6 billion. Chad and Steve, yeah they had a nice day.

Check Out Line: Amazon’s board shrinks

Check out the downsizing at Amazon.com.

No, no, it’s not a big corporate layoff. But the e-commerce giant is cutting the size of its board of directors by 12.5 percent.

Of course, once you’ve lost the part of “the center of gravity in the Internet,” why even try to replace him.

That phrase is what Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is quoted as calling John Doerr and Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, the Silicon Valley Venture Capital firm where he is a partner.

Amazon said in March that Doerr, who has served on the board for 14 years, will not stand for reelection.

In the company’s annual proxy statement released on Wednesday, Amazon said it will not replace Doerr, but instead cut the size of its board from eight to seven. The seven nominees are all current directors of the company and all but one have served for at least six years.

Also of interest in the proxy, CEO Jeff Bezos only made a salary of $81,840 again last year and all his other other compensation was $1.7 million, which consisted of costs for Bezos’ security. Sure, he owns about $13 billion in Amazon stock, but you’d think they would have at least given the guy a Kindle or something.  (Oh,  maybe they did, judging by this Reuters photo).

No need for a man purse, wear an iPad vest instead!

You’ve got the hottest new gadget in town. Now where do you put it?   Inside an iPAD-compatible vest, of course.   Ketchum, Idaho-based Scottevest, which debuted a line of clothing in 2005 that was compatible with the smaller iPod, has introduced “outerwear” with a large interior pocket that holds Apple‘s latest device securely without damaging the screen.    

“If you’re going to carry it around all the time, you don’t want to carry it in a purse,” said Chief Executive and Founder Scott Jordan. “I don’t think men want to carry around a purse.” 

The jackets and vests, which cost about $100 and are based on the humble yet practical fly-fisherman’s vest, can also tote Kindles, magazines, or legal pads.      Making apparel compatible with technology is nothing new. In 2005, companies like Scottevest and Kenpo in New York introduced jackets that hid unsightly iPod wires and allowed users to access the device’s controls.

Despite what Jordan called a $1 billion market for iPod accessories, he saw greater opportunity in travel goods, where travelers need extra pockets for books, cameras and other items.

Scottevest, which sells mostly online but also supplies the military and some corporations like Google and Microsoft (executives like to put their logos on the vests, Jordan says) is coming out with a “carry-on coat” that zips up into a carry-on bag this fall, and a full women’s line in the spring.

The company, whose sales are fast approaching $10 million, also has found an unlikely fan base apart from travelers and gadget hounds.      “Poker players love our stuff. They have chips and iPods and gum and Visine,” said Jordan. “It’s bizarre. They gravitated to us without us even knowing about it.”

(Photo courtesy of Scottevest)

Check Out Line: No nook for you

Check out another nook delay.

Some of Barnes & Noble’s top stores were supposed to have nook e-readers available for sale today.  Instead, shoppers can just look at the nook, not take it home.

In-store demo models have been delivered and Barnes & Noble is accepting pre-orders, spokeswoman Mary Ellen Keating said.

That’s a slight change from what she said last week:  “We expect to have them in our highest-volume stores on December 7th and in a very limited number.”

Barnes & Noble had earlier hoped to have a limited number of its e-readers in some of its stores around Nov. 30.

While shoppers may struggle to get nooks — and who knows, maybe buy Kindles instead? – at least one select group of consumers got their hands on the gadget last week.  The studio audience at The Ellen DeGeneres Show got nooks, among other tech goodies, during the first day of “Ellen’s 12 Days of Giveaways,” which aired last Thursday. 

Also in the basket:

from MediaFile:

Barnes & Noble plans big (e-reader?) event

Brace yourself for the next salvo in the battle of the ebook readers (or electronic reading devices, or e-reader, or whatever you want to call them).

Barnes & Noble is planning a "major event" next Tuesday in New York to announce a mystery... something.

The bookseller won't say exactly what it will announce, but we'd be surprised if its NOT a digital book reader, to compete with Amazon's Kindle and Sony's Reader series.

In fact, Gizmodo says it has the goods on the device -- which it says has "a multi-touch display like an iPhone" -- and picture of the device. Click the link and take a look.

What do you think of this device (which may or may not be the actual product)? For that matter, what do you think about e-readers? Are you ready to buy one?

Let us know in the comment area.

Amazon.com hopes results take spotlight off snafus

Amazon.com reports second-quarter results this week and the online retailer is likely hoping projected market share gains take the focus off of two embarrassing Kindle blunders last week.  

 On Friday, Amazon acknowledged that it had deleted certain purchased e-books from the Kindles of an undisclosed number of owners. Why? Turns out that Amazon never had the rights in the first place to sell digital copies of the works. Poof! They went away.      As one blogger on Gizmodo wrote: “If you can’t be sure that you own something after you pay for it, what’s the point?”        Amazon later acknowledged that it should have alerted its customers.   “These books were added to our catalog using our self-service platform by a third-party who did not have the rights to the books.  When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers’ devices, and refunded customers,” said a spokesman. 

Ironically, the books at issue were George Orwell’s totalitarianism-themed classics “1984″ and “Animal Farm.”   The vanishing book episode was the second public relations snafu in a week for the Seattle-based company, whose $299 Kindle or $489 Kindle DX are touted as the future of reading. On Wednesday, a lawsuit was filed in Seattle by a Kindle owner claiming its protective cover, which is sold separately, actually can end up damaging the device. The lawsuit is seeking class action status.   Kindle users download books, magazines and newspapers from the Kindle Store, and are billed accordingly.   Amazon watchers aren’t sure just how profitable the device and its downloaded content are for the company, and a host of variables from competition to the economics of publishing complicate the discussion.

But today, Credit Suisse estimated the company will gain about $420 million in total Kindle revenue – devices and content – in 2009, growing potentially to $3.9 billion by 2014.   Analyst Spencer Wang estimates a gross profit per unit of $69 for the Kindle, based on an estimated cost of goods of $230. That’s a 23 percent gross margin, which could rise north of the 30s as cost of goods decline, he wrote.   Wang acknowledged that “growth in the Kindle is likely to cannibalize to some extent Amazon’s core business of selling printed books” and said the Kindle should not be viewed as a “material driver to Amazon’s fundamentals in the medium term.”

(Photo: Reuters)

Is Amazon’s Kindle DX e-reader hype?

“The new Kindle DX is bigger, but is it better?” asked one headline as gadget reviewers examined the latest electronic reader from Amazon.com.

The verdict: “It isn’t as revolutionary as its promoters might like us to think.”

Amazon’s brand of Kindle e-readers now has a new addition, the Kindle DX, and despite the company’s hype, the $489 device may remain a niche product that appeals to a limited few.

The Seattle-based online retailer says the Kindle DX is optimized for newspapers and textbooks, and touts its large memory — 3,500 books — and auto-rotating screen.

But Amazon is not alone in the e-reader space — remember Sony? — and its new version will face increased competition from a host of rival products due on the market in the near future.

A smattering of reviews online spoke favorably about the DX’s larger display that makes viewing documents easier, but some cited an awkward browser — still labeled experimental by the company — lack of color and large size that makes it inconvenient for commuters.

As for price? The new version is $130 more than a Kindle 2 — the updated version that came out earlier this year — a fact that has caused many raised eyebrows.

Check Out Line: Recession? Not at Amazon.com

Check out the sales surge at Amazon.

The online retailer beat Wall Street expectations for quarterly earnings and revenue as lowered prices lured more shoppers online. It also benefited as sales of its Kindle electronic reader gained momentum.

The company increased revenue an unexpectedly strong 18 percent as cash-strapped consumers went shopping online, and Amazon’s own discount shipping program spurred purchases. 

Promotions and cost-consciousness — as customers eschewed a trip to the mall in favor of browsing for free online — helped it post a 21 percent sales gain in North America. 

“It tells you how well they’re executing and winning business with customers and increasing share of wallet with their consumers,” said Steve Weinstein at Pacific Crest Securities.

He noted that Amazon’s U.S. business was growing faster than the overall e-commerce market. “It’s an incredible feat.”

Chief Executive Jeff Bezos said sales of the company’s Kindle had “exceeded our most optimistic expectations.”