Tag Archives: Kindle

In America, one of the most popular e-readers is the Kindle, designed by Amazon. The invention of Kindle began in 2004, with Amazon aiming to get an e-reader out before any of its competitors. The first edition of the e-reader was released in 2007. The first paperwhite generation was released in 2012, and the LED tablet, the Kindle Fire, was released in 2011.

Although Amazon doesn’t release official numbers, unofficial sources state that as of 2009, two years after its first release, three million Kindles had been sold. In 2011, 48 percent of all e-book readers shipped were Kindles.

While incredibly popular among readers, the Kindle is incredibly unpopular in the publishing industry. Specifically, Amazon is incredibly unpopular in the publishing industry. Its pricing practices have sent waves through the industry time and time again, consistently pricing books low and undercutting the major houses such as Hachette and Penguin Random House.

Now, I am by and large ambivalent toward the existence of e-readers in my life. They have their place, and they’re really handy if you’re, hypothetically, writing a paper the night before it’s due and suddenly need a book for it. Generally, I will buy a physical copy of a book if it is at all feasible. I do own a Kindle Fire that I won as a reward for taking a survey in undergrad in 2008. I’ve read maybe fifteen books on it since then.

However, Amazon makes it incredibly easy for people to self-publish on their Kindle Direct Publishing. According to the website, it can be done in less than five minutes and authors get up to 70 percent of their royalties (much higher than they’ll get from a regular publishing house!). Regardless on my personal opinions on self publishing (most people who self publish probably shouldn’t), this is a great way for people who just want their books published to do so.

Amazon, and by extension, the Kindle, is dangerous to the publishing industry. In a 2009 article titled “Fear the Kindle,” Slate points out that should Amazon become to the publishing industry what Apple became to the music industry—the largest distributor—it could be incredibly damaging. Now in the seven years since this article was published, it’s obviously not as bad as Slate feared it would be.

For the most part, Amazon treats books as loss-leaders, a way to get people into the store (metaphorically, in their case, except for the couple Amazon Books stores). Even those stores serve largely—at least according to critics—as a way to sell Kindles, Echo, and Fire TV. For the publishing industry and the authors—which, for the record, depend on people buying books for much of their revenue—this is a problem. People know they can get books cheaper on Amazon and the Kindle, so why pay full price for a physical book or for an alternate form of it?

In the end, though, the Kindle is doing well. They’re the market leader right now, and there’s no reason to assume they won’t be for a long time. So, whatever Jeff Bezos and Amazon are doing, they’re doing it right, not matter what bricks-and-mortar stores and the publishing industry wishes they’d do.