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Amazon Now Selling More Kindle Books Than Hardcover Ones

by Amar Toor on July 20, 2010 at 09:20 AM

amazon kindleThe Kindle may be facing stiff e-reader competition from Apple's iPad, but, when it comes to printed books, at least, Amazon's reader seems to be dominating the market pretty handily. The company says it sold approximately 143 Kindle books for every 100 hardcover books sold over the past three months, and that gap is continuing to widen. Last month alone, for example, Amazon sold 180 Kindle books for every 100 hardcovers -- thanks, in large part, to the company's decision to lower the Kindle's price tag from $259 to $189. "We've reached a tipping point with the new price of Kindle," Amazon founder Jeff Bezos says. "The growth rate of Kindle device unit sales has tripled since we lowered the price."

TechCrunch speculates that the Kindle's recent rise might have something to do with Amazon's e-book prices, as well. The retailer now boasts over 630,000 books available on the Kindle, roughly 510,000 of which are priced at $9.99 or less. Books sold on Apple's iBookstore, on the other hand, tend to be more expensive. Kindle users also have access to more than 1.8 million, pre-1923 books that are now out of copyright, and are totally free.

By Amazon's own admission, the Kindle can't offer users the same kind of experience that the iPad can. But it doesn't seem like the company is interested in taking on Apple, anyway. By lowering its price to levels far below the iPad's $499 threshold, Amazon is implicitly telling customers that they shouldn't expect all the bells and whistles that come with Apple's price tag. What they'll get is a relatively affordable reader with reasonably priced books. So far, the strategy seems to be paying dividends [From: TechCrunch]

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