Source Claims 240K Kindles Sold 176
Naturalist writes "Exact data on (the Linux-powered) Kindle sales figures have been hard to come by. Amazon is notoriously tight-lipped about it, and although CEO Jeff Bezos did give some Kindle-related information back in July, the company has yet to break out how many readers it has sold to date. Now TechCrunch claims to have spoken to a source close to Amazon with direct knowledge of the company's sales figures. According to this unnamed source, Amazon has sold 240,000 Kindles to date, for an estimated hardware revenue between $86 million and $96 million; media sales would push the total above $100M." We've been following the Kindle since its launch nine months ago.
uhhh (Score:1, Informative)
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A little bit of marketing could maybe help (Score:2)
I am usually keeping an eye on Linux projects that have a certain size, but this is honestly the first time I hear about this.
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I am usually keeping an eye on Linux projects that have a certain size, but this is honestly the first time I hear about this.
Really? I suppose you're not an Amazon customer or just a peruser? The damn thing is on every page of their site. It's marketing all over the stripmall.
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I have one too and I love it. The only negative is that if I use Calibre (the Linux software) I cannot use the Windows software (that comes with the ebook).
It isn't that important but having the ability to sync with my Vista Laptop and my Linux desktop would be nice.
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With DRM/TPMs being legally protected now there's a big push in the copyright industry to move to protected digital forms. When content is surrounded by DRM/TPMs then they can remove fair use or anything that law makers provide.
With DRM/TPMs being legally protected, there now is a larger hacking movement then ever to sabotage DRM schemes before they are even released.
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I'm normally among the first to smell a Treacherous Computing/Digital Restrictions Management dystopia, but can't "e-paper" be photocopied or scanned? I'm picturing a solenoid or two and a short program that synchronizes the "next page" button with the "scan/copy" button here.
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No, No!
They sold 240 MegaKindles, each of which is one seventh the physical size of the Library of Congress.
Believed it (Score:2)
You know its slashdot when it's.. (Score:5, Informative)
You know you're reading slashdot when the number given is 1,000 times off.
240,000 is not 240 million
Re:You know its slashdot when it's.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You know its slashdot when it's.. (Score:5, Funny)
That's not M as in Million, it's M as in Mousand.
Yeah, they should have used K as in Kousand ...
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Bzzzt. For anyone who has worked in banking in the US, M means thousand, and MM means million. It bugs me to this day when people write 240M when they mean 240 million.
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Interesting. The only knowledge I have of MM being millions is with natrual gas MMBTU
Re:You know its slashdot when it's.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Bzzzt. For anyone who has worked in banking in the US, M means thousand, and MM means million. It bugs me to this day when people write 240M when they mean 240 million.
M is also used in the advertising industry for thousands. For example, the cost of an ad buy can be given in thousands of impressions, known as CCM (cost per thousand).
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I have a tube tester [alfter.us] for which the schematic [alfter.us] used "M" where we would now use "k" and "Meg" where we would now use "M." As you can see in the picture, it contains a roll chart of different types of tubes and the settings to use to determine whether they're any good. A few years ago, I tried to puzzle out a way to test tubes not listed in t
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Figures that an American institute uses outdated systems of counting and measuring instead of internationally defined ones.
k = kilo is 1000
M = mega is 1.000.000
G = giga(jiga for bttf fans) is 1.000.000.000
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k = kilo is 1000
M = mega is 1.000.000
G = giga(jiga for bttf fans) is 1.000.000.000
I think you would be most confused if someone abbriviated one billion dollars as "1G". It works for computers because we say "ten kilobytes" but for most people it'd be just as confusing that "ten thousand dollars" is "10k" or "10M" since noone uses the kilodollar. Both things are just a learned habit from an indirect source (SI prefixes or Latin).
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In the UK we sort-of use the kilopound (k£?). "It costs five kay" means it costs 5000, and could be written as £5k. We
write "£5M" to mean £5000000, but it's always spoken as "million", not "em".
Incidentally, Google tells me that (UK£ 5) [google.co.uk] * Boltzmann constant = 1.34958567 Ã--
10-22 m2 kg s-2 K-1 U.S. Dollars. And there are lots of non-technical uses of "£5k" in the
search results, whereas "$5k" is either UK sites or technical US sites.
Re:You know its slashdot when it's.. (Score:5, Insightful)
For anyone who has worked in banking in the US, M means thousand, and MM means million.
The target audience of slashdot is geeks - specifically, engineering/computer geeks. This audience uses K for thousand.
If you want to use M for thousand on bankerdot.org, sure, go for it.
Re:You know its slashdot when it's.. (Score:5, Funny)
This audience uses K for thousand
No, we use K for 2**10, which is 1024, not 1000.
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Right, but k (lower case, as in metric) is 1,000.
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And the of course there's the Bakers Kilobyte [xkcd.com].
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This audience uses K for thousand
No, we use K for 2**10, which is 1024, not 1000.
A pow(2,10) would suffice.
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No, thousand should be a lowercase 'k', and should be attached to the following word, not the number. e.g., "240 kiloKindles".
Really, SI prefixes aren't that complicated... If people would just take a hectosecond or two to think about what they're saying, it'd make things less confusing for everybody.
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First, Get Off My Lawn.
Second, some of us use computers for business, not just for posting to Slashdot. Twenty years of financial services IT makes me a geek, whether I like it or not.
Re:You know its slashdot when it's.. (Score:4, Funny)
Is that why the U.S. banking system went belly-up?
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is it all of banking? I just thought it was us crazy people working at bloomberg.
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Hah, I never knew that. At least 'k' for thousand is unambiguous. (Those who prefer 1024 should use uppercase K, which is also Kelvin, though unlikely to be confused.)
MM for million is not such a great idea; in scientific notation it would be a million million, and in Roman numerals 2000.
Re:You know its slashdot when it's.. (Score:5, Informative)
Latin. Its the roman numeral for 1000.
See milli.
Re:You know its slashdot when it's.. (Score:5, Informative)
Wouldn't it make sense to use K?
As a rule, Latin is used for numbers less than 1. Greek is used for numbers greater than 1.
1000 = kilo (greek)
1/1000 = milli (latin)
10 = deca (greek)
1/10 = deci (latin)
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which in modern usage is only used for copyrights these days, and not even there very often. Too damn hard to read. (MCMXCIX as an example, or MCMLXXXVIII - quick - what's that?)
milli = 1/1000.
Kilo = 1000
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Then why would they use MM for million? Wouldn't that be 2 thousand, not 1 million?
Yes, but no one wants to acknowledge your correct useage of Roman numerals, so I'll step up and do so.
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The editors learned math from their Latin professors... what are you going to do?
It could be more than million (Score:2)
It could pass million easily if Amazon wasn't stupid to make it USA/Canada(?) only.
We, foreigners are the ones who sees absurd things like $20 book having $40 DHL posting price. Not Americans. I think they even send it free or something there.
Move to digital, spend millions to research and make it USA only. Who to blame this time? Is there a MPAA/RIAA in book scene? Will they still whine about pirated e-books?
Everything old is new again (Score:4, Funny)
Sales figures look much more exciting in roman numerals!
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Is that what it's about? Who came up with the lousy idea of mixing modern and ancient number systems?
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Is that what it's about? Who came up with the lousy idea of mixing modern and ancient number systems?
Abbreviations. I hate roman numerals with a passion, but I can see why some would use them as and abbreviation for a prefix. Of course, you could always use, 1e3 instead of 1000 or 1e6 for 1000000. Why isn't that more standard? Heck we were even taught that in junior high. I've yet to see numbers in that format on signs, ads, or random products around though.
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I've seen "k" mean thousand and "M" mean million, which is from the modern SI measurement system. In my opinion, it's easier than dealing with exponents. And I've seen it used a lot in the US on billboards and ads, despite this country's unwillingness to embrace SI.
one should come up with numbers that make sense (Score:4, Interesting)
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ah but that's the thing, you can read slashdot on the kindle, I'm not sure if it's free or not, they like to charge $9.99 for things, but you are paying $400 for a device that has much less expensive hardware, and doesn't charge the end user for their bandwidth, despite using cellular data service...
"More than 350 top blogs from the worlds of business, technology, sports, entertainment, and politics, including BoingBoing, Slashdot, TechCrunch, ESPN's Bill Simmons, The Onion, Michelle Malkin, and The Huffing
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Great Title (Score:5, Funny)
When I read the 240M title I wondered where my Kindle was in the house and why I could not remember even buying it :)
Doesn't seem like that many (Score:3, Interesting)
If I was an investor in Amazon, I would be upset that they are not releasing any numbers. I would certainly no longer hold a position in them. It looks pretty small when you think about how many devices Apple and Nintendo are selling.
Re:Doesn't seem like that many (Score:4, Insightful)
Put in perspective, if the numbers I'm seeing on websites about iPhone sales are correct, this puts the kindle somewhere on the order of 10-20 days worth of iPhone sales.... Yeah, not that great. Book reading on an existing device is useful and a lot of people will do it. Buying a special piece of hardware whose primary purpose is book reading... definitely a niche market, particularly when it costs about twice as much as an iPhone (carrier subsidized) that does so much more....
Re:Doesn't seem like that many (Score:5, Funny)
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Welcome to Slashdot, where if you can't be the absolute best at everything, you might as well not bother at all.
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I was thinking $40-60, but yes. Actually, IMHO, it tries to do too much with the whole EVDO data thing, resulting in a device that's overly feature-packed and expensive hardware-wise for a device whose software basically just lets you read electronic books. It's like putting a Cummins diesel in a golf cart. If they had made it a USB mass storage device at around a $50 price point, it would have been a much bigger hit, I think.
Re:Doesn't seem like that many (Score:4, Informative)
Obviously you have had no experience with a Kindle. The EVDO is the "special sauce". I have owned one for 8 months and I love it. I use it every day. I am reading (buying) about 3 books a month (each book is about $6, best-sellers are more like $10, but I usually wait until they "age" a bit). Plus I shut off my newspaper ($30/month) and get it delivered to my Kindle instead ($10/month), so in the end my monthly outlay for reading materials is unchanged while I am essentially getting 3 books/month for free. So from that perspective, my $400 initial outlay (I was an early adopter before the price drop) will be paid for in 33 months. Anyhow, what makes this device really attractive to me is the (free) wireless. Being able to browse their book collection (which is substantial), download and read a few chapters (for free) anywhere, anytime, is extremely addicting. And being able to buy the book and be reading it in less than 30 seconds is a convenience I've grown to "need". In the morning when I turn it on, there is my newspaper - I don't have to boot the PC, connect the USB, do the "syncing" thing, it's just delivered automatically. Built in web-browsing for checking the occassional baseball score or my email is also a big plus. Yes, the hardware is a bit clunky (too many next page buttons - there is no place to hold the thing), and the industrial design looks like something from the 80s, but the battery lasts a good long time (many days if you turn off the wireless and just use it as a book) and the display is very easy on the eyes. Never having to tether to a computer is a really big deal for me - don't knock it until you've tried it.
Re:Doesn't seem like that many... But (Score:4, Insightful)
Buying a special piece of hardware whose primary purpose is book reading... definitely a niche market
Yeah, but... I've been on Holiday in London for the past month. I take the tube (when it's actually running) everywhere and I've got to say the US$700 I spent on my iRex iLiad and about US$100 worth of novels has been a godsend on the train. The batteries last all day, bright light only improves the readability and much more portable than a laptop.
It may be a niche market but it has potential. Unfortunately, the only way this potential is going to be achieved is if the corporate players get their collective heads out of their ass and standardize on one, decent, open, portable format.
They also have to port previous works into an electronic format. Try to find Robert Ludlum's books on mobipocket format. You can't, at least not the pre-death publications. Dale Brown? "Oh yeah, let's pick every other book to publish." What idiot does that. If I'm going paperless then I'm going paperless.
DRM is tolerable but there's no reason you can't have an open format that supports DRM.
The people that dreamed up these different formats have done such a poor job it's not funny. PDB don't support different typefaces. PDF's don't reflow. HTML isn't going to support DRM and you need to zip to capture multiple files. Kindle isn't compatible with anybody else, lit is closed. While I find mobipocket tolerable try accurately converting any of the others to mobipocket. They're all just a kludge. Concepts of "paragraph", "chapter", "lists" and "Table" all are meaningless in these formats and essential concepts for reflowable layout. Basically, a quick experience in trying to convert formats and you will quickly understand that the people who designed these "formats" know nothing about capturing and encoding information.
Until they get a clue eBooks are dead in the water. (And I like mine, that should tell you something.)
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In contrast I can onl
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Until they get a clue eBooks are dead in the water. (And I like mine, that should tell you something.)
I love the concept and really can't wait to get one myself. My problems is their wanting me to spend a $300-400 on a single purpose device that usually only reads their chosen format. Sure the display is great and the batteries last a long time, but I'd rather spend a few more for a laptop that can read and convert nearly any format that I happen to have. When I can spend $30-50 and get a brand new one and
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I bought a Kindle last week - after months and months of thinking about it. I have read eBooks on many many devices - from my trusty old Palm III to Clie's to iPAQs and now the Kindle.
As a reading experience - the Kindle blows them all out of the water. I'm pretty sure any eInk device would - it is great. Battery life, readability - awesome.
The reason I dithered so long was the DRM issue that has plagued eBooks from the start. What finally brought me over is that Kindle format is MobiPocket and it is po
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"Put in perspective, if the numbers I'm seeing on websites about iPhone sales are correct, this puts the kindle somewhere on the order of 10-20 days worth of iPhone sales"
iPhones sales are slower then they would be do to very limited supply. Apple has plans to ramp up iPhone production to 800,000 units per week. This means every few days Apple will sell Amazon's entire run of Kindles.
I think the problem with Kindle is that it is a single purpose device. All it does is read books. And not even all books o
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And actually, Nokia sells more phones than the number of iPhones out there every 3 days.
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Yeah, but not smartphones that would be capable of doing the equivalent of what the Kindle does. The general phone market isn't relevant for comparison. In the smartphone market, the iPhone is a pretty big player. Nokia's worldwide smartphone sales only outnumber the iPhone by a factor of 8 or so. (Source: Register Hardware [reghardware.co.uk])
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If I was an investor in Amazon, I would be upset that they are not releasing any numbers. I would certainly no longer hold a position in them. It looks pretty small when you think about how many devices Apple and Nintendo are selling.
As an investor, why would you care at all about how many units sold? It doesn't matter if they sold 240 or 240 million, it only matters how much they were sold for, how much it cost to sell them, and what that means to their overall cost and revenue structures.
Knowing that someone has sold X widgets at a sell price of $Y tells you absolutely nothing. Knowing that someone has sold $X in product with an average profit margin of Y% with a cost of $Z to run the company is helpful information.
Take a look at Amaz
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As an investor, again, this doesn't matter. I don't care if you've sold a trillion units or one if you aren't making enough money on them for the stock price to go up or for dividends to be paid.
Talk about hearsay.. (Score:1)
TechCrunch claims to have spoken to a source close to Amazon with direct knowledge of the company's sales figures.
.
My friend talked to his brother who knows a guy And said He has all the answers.
What the heck kind of Journalism is that?!..
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Is this source really reliable? (Score:1)
Amazon: Kindle is the greatest! Seriously, buy one [nakedloon.com]
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Let's try that again:
Not selling too well... (Score:2)
ugh (Score:5, Insightful)
I can see how it could come in handy if you're on vacation and want to travel light, but IMO that's not nearly enough to overcome the negatives. I'll probably get an e-book reader in 2030 or something. There's no rush. First I want to see someone get it right.
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Anybody know if this is true?
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I like your first statement. I must say, as a Kindle owner I perfectly understand your point of view. Here's the way I see it
1. The cost was fine for me, but I'm also a young guy with a decent job so I've got some disposable income.
3. PDF's can't transfer well because of the size of the screen... I do wish there were an easy way to read technical papers on it though, I dont see it until the E-ink comes down in price and improves durability though.
4. Again, I've got adequate money right now, if its a book
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You forgot one - for a modern device in a culture that is bent on style, the kindle is quite hideous. iPhone, iPod, iMac, etc...though I'm not a big Apple fan (I do own an iPod), the style factor is why these things sell. The Kindle looks like it's still a prototype.
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You forgot one - for a modern device in a culture that is bent on style, the kindle is quite hideous. iPhone, iPod, iMac, etc...though I'm not a big Apple fan (I do own an iPod), the style factor is why these things sell. The Kindle looks like it's still a prototype.
I think the Kindle has a really slick, cutting-edge look!
On a related note, I just woke up from a 20-year coma; can somebody tell me how to get this "Amazon" thing on my Commodore 64 so I can buy some bad-ass New Kids on the Block cassettes?
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145,000 available books within a year of the Kindle's release isn't too shabby, IMO -- better certainly than any other e-book reader that has come to market. And that number isn't counting all the stuff you can get from Project Gutenberg and other non-Amazon sources.
As for traveling light, I'm currently reading Cryptonomicon and next up will be Neal Stephenson's new book or Peter Hamilton's Night's Dawn Trilogy. Amazon has the whole trilogy (how many pages is that?) in one "volume." It sells for less than
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I agree with all your points, really, but one thing that would convince me to buy a Kindle soon would be if they worked a deal with SafariBooks to let me access my safari subscription via the kindle for no extra money. To be able to get all those technical books in a convenient format would be a game changer for me. I'd buy a Kindle in a heartbeat. O'Reilley has been trying to work something with them, but so far they are only offering certain books in PDF format if you buy the book. To be fair not all the
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I also dislike this device. I would salivate if they:
1. Got rid of EVDO and just gave me wifi
2. Lowered the price to $100 or so.
3. Let me easily copy PDFs, cbr, etc.
I understand the appeal of an EVDO device that automagically downloads books, but thats a small niche at this price. I should not have to pay 400 dollars just to get started. Also, I'm not an image conscious person, but christ, that this is ugly. It looks like a daily planner from Sharper Imager circa 1986.
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Yeah. I bought an Asus Eee 900 recently for $440, and read one of the Tor free PDFs on it. It made a nice reader. Telling the PDF reader to rotate into landscape and turning it on the side puts one page at a time on the screen, and you get none of the refresh issues you have with eInk, and all on a device that is light and has good battery life. I took it with me on vacation and not only used it as a reader, but also to check google maps for directions to restaurants, etc. The only downside was the scr
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Paper, printing, and binding are usually not a significant percentage of the cost of a textbook. Digital textbooks might have the advantage of cutting out the campus bookstore as a middleman, but I suspect that the publisher is not going to let the student have the money that would have gone to the store (typically about 27%). Another issue is returns
Amazon wants Kindle to fail? (Score:4, Insightful)
Books are cheap in the U.S. and people have a lot of room to store them, so Kindle is definitely a niche product in its domestic market. However, in other countries books are expensive and often space is at a premium. Kindle offers huge advantages, and would be wildly successful in these markets.
How does Amazon respond to this market need? They refuse point blank to sell kindle devices or media to anyone outside North America.
Sure, whispernet is NA only. But a USB connection works just as well...
What sane company ignores its largest potential market? And when it does, the writing is on the wall. If I was a shareholder, I would be livid.
So the only question that remains is why Kindle is being set up for failure? Simple incompetence? Xenophobia? Or something more subtle?
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However, in other countries books are expensive and often space is at a premium.
Exactly. I give away all my books after reading them because I have no space to store them. Add this to the fact that I read in english in a non-english speaking country, it adds up in terms of postage stamps to get them shipped here. I've been waiting for years for a good e-ink device. I have high hopes for the next version of the Kindle...
Textbooks? (Score:2)
Correction; they refuse to sell the devices outside of the USA. I can't buy one up here in Canada.
There's lots wrong with Amazon's marketing strategy; some kinds of books in the US are expensive, such as text books, and much of this cost comes from their limited runs. Publishing these books to the Kindle would eliminate much of the cost associated with publishing overhead. This would also stop poor students from having to lug a hundred pounds of textbooks around with them.
Textbooks are also a perfect cho
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I'll take a guess that it's nothing to do with any of that. The name "Kindle" gives you a clue if you know anything about the historical relationship between publishers and distributors. Burning books. Basically, publishers hate (and I mean hate) distributors. Not only does distribution means high costs, it means massive restrictions on what publishers can publish. Poetry? Philosophy? Not a hope in hell: if it doesn't sell within a week, those tiny shelves need to be stacked with some crap that does. Lowest
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So the only question that remains is why Kindle is being set up for failure? Simple incompetence? Xenophobia? Or something more subtle?
Yeah, xenophobia, I'm sure that's it. Amazon would rather not have any non-American mitts on the Kindle because ... because what, the board is made up of folks who wouldn't be able to sleep at night knowing that Australians or Brazilians or Italians were using their precious Kindle? My god, the very thought of it must make them quake!
Don't you think that Amazon is salivating at the prospect of cornering the international e-book market? Sure, it may be tiny now but that's a market that's only going to exp
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So they sell $100M in product and that's a failure to you? Are you fucking retarded? These unofficial numbers would make it the most successful eBook reader in the U.S. by far.
As for selling outside the U.S. ...that's complicated. First there's the whispernet issue which isn't available everywhere and may be cost prohibitive for them to acquire in many countries, then there's the contracts they have with the publishers.
It's just not that simple. I'm sure Amazon would love to sell it everywhere but things
Did anyone but me buy one of these? (Score:2)
Compromise on L (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Compromise on L (Score:5, Funny)
240l of Kindles is approx 65 gallons
But you can only get that if they blend.
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They always blend.
Re:It sucks that "K" and "M" are so close together (Score:2)
I hadn't thought about it but after reading your post I guessed correctly ;)
Re:It sucks that "K" and "M" are so close together (Score:5, Funny)
I knew who posted the story without looking.
mdawson?
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That's true in some markets, but in typical day-to-day use, k=thousand and M=million. There's only one other time I can recall 'MM' being used for million, and it was also in the context of sales/revenue.
It's like "milliard" - not technically wrong, but you'll confuse the fuck out of most people with it.
It's the Slashdot culture, and it works, sometimes (Score:2)
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Silence Prole!
If the Mod's that be decide you shall not post, YOU SHALL NOT POST!!
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At least those over 55 years of age.