Kindle is the biggest selling item on Amazon, bests sliced bread

Recession? Not if you're the Amazon Kindle, it turns out -- it's currently the bestselling product across all categories at Amazon. Yes, that means it's outselling the robotic hamsters, the t-shirts with wolves howling at the moon, and the limited edition Snuggies. November, when people traditionally start trampling each other in the name of gift giving and holiday cheer, has also been the best single month of sales ever for the e-reading device, in spite of the fact that there's more competition than ever for it -- so that's good news for them, right? Amazon hasn't released any actual numbers, of course, so it's hard to say what it all means. The other good news is that as far as we can tell, it doesn't look like they'll sell out anytime soon. Full press release is after the break.

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Kindle Breaks Record for Sales in a Single Month During November
Kindle is the Hottest Gift This Holiday Season Across All Amazon Product Categories-Not Just Electronics

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 30, 2009--

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced that November is already the best sales month ever for Kindle, even before Cyber Monday. Kindle continues to be the most wished for, the most gifted, and the #1 bestselling product across all product categories on Amazon. The latest generation Kindle – just released in October – is $259 and available for immediate shipment today at www.amazon.com/kindle. "Kindle is a great gift for anyone who loves to read and it's flying off the shelves faster than any other product Amazon sells," said Ian Freed, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. "We're seeing lots of people buying from one to a handful of Kindles as gifts for friends or family, as well as many businesses and other organizations buying Kindles in large quantities for their employees or customers."

Kindle is the revolutionary portable reader that wirelessly downloads books, magazines, newspapers and personal documents to a crisp, high-resolution 6-inch electronic ink display that looks and reads like real paper. Kindle utilizes the same 3G wireless technology as advanced cell phones, so users never need to hunt for a Wi-Fi hotspot. The latest generation Kindle with Global Wireless enables readers to wirelessly download content in over 100 countries and territories.

About Amazon.com Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), a Fortune 500 company based in Seattle, opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth's Biggest Selection. Amazon.com, Inc., seeks to be Earth's most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices. Amazon.com and other sellers offer millions of unique new, refurbished and used items in categories such as Books; Movies, Music & Games; Digital Downloads; Electronics & Computers; Home & Garden; Toys, Kids & Baby; Grocery; Apparel; Shoes & Jewelry; Health & Beauty; Sports & Outdoors; and Tools, Auto & Industrial. Amazon Web Services provides Amazon's developer customers with access to in-the-cloud infrastructure services based on Amazon's own back-end technology platform, which developers can use to enable virtually any type of business. Examples of the services offered by Amazon Web Services are Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon SimpleDB, Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), Amazon Flexible Payments Service (Amazon FPS), Amazon Mechanical Turk and Amazon CloudFront. Amazon and its affiliates operate websites, including www.amazon.com, www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.co.jp, www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.ca, and www.amazon.cn. As used herein, "Amazon.com," "we," "our" and similar terms include Amazon.com, Inc., and its subsidiaries, unless the context indicates otherwise.

Forward-Looking Statements This announcement contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Actual results may differ significantly from management's expectations. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that include, among others, risks related to competition, management of growth, new products, services and technologies, potential fluctuations in operating results, international expansion, outcomes of legal proceedings and claims, fulfillment center optimization, seasonality, commercial agreements, acquisitions and strategic transactions, foreign exchange rates, system interruption, inventory, government regulation and taxation, payments and fraud. More information about factors that potentially could affect Amazon.com's financial results is included in Amazon.com's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings. Kindle devices are sold through Amazon Digital Services, Inc.

Source: Amazon.com, Inc. Amazon.com, Inc.

[Nicnac Posted Nov 30th 2009 1:04PM]

meaning it outsold Palin's book... OR ... people bought Kindles to read Palin's book! HOLY SHI.....

[balazamon0 Posted Nov 30th 2009 1:14PM]

These are only worth buying for avid book readers... I go through three to four books a month so my kindle will pay itself off within a year. To someone who only reads occasionally it is pretty pointless. It does need a few more features however, I would like to be able to loan out books to friends just like I can with a real book.

[jcrash Posted Nov 30th 2009 1:19PM]

You know what would pay off more? A library card.

[Vidikron Posted Nov 30th 2009 2:07PM]

@jcrash

Sure, if you ignore convenience and other possible issues like limited quantities and late fees.

[ZeroCorpse Posted Nov 30th 2009 3:31PM]

@jcrash

Yeah. it's fun reading a book and finding someone else's spit, boogers, and hair all over chapter six.

[iName Posted Nov 30th 2009 3:20PM]

if it's doing so well, why aren't they saying NUMBERS.

[Monkey Fetish Posted Nov 30th 2009 3:28PM]

I was planning on getting the Nook, but its all sold out.

Not a fan of the closed off nature of the Kindle, but both the Sony and Nook are out of stock...

[ZeroCorpse Posted Nov 30th 2009 3:37PM]

@Monkey Fetish

Nook and Sony are JUST AS CLOSED OFF as the Kindle.

The only difference is that those companies haven't had the issue of pirates putting up illegally-published books in their format, and Kindle has-- And yes, they handled it poorly, but they learned from it and more-than compensated for the gaffe (People got $30 for their trouble, on top of the book's cost refunded).

Still, Kindle does *not* require you to get your books from Amazon, just as the Sony doesn't require you to get books from the Sony store and Nook doesn't require you to order from B&N. If you Do order from Sony/B&N, though, the books have *just as much DRM* as the Kindle editions.

There's no getting around this unless you get pirated books, and if you're doing that, there's nothing stopping you from using them on ANY of the e-readers out there, including the Kindle.

Really, the Kindle is not "closed off" or "restricted" any more than any of the other major e-readers. The only way you get a totally open e-reader is if you get a cheap Chinese clone... And then you're stuck with ONLY reading pirated or public domain books, since the clones won't read Sony, Amazon, or B&N editions.

[anaphora68 Posted Nov 30th 2009 5:43PM]

@ZeroCorpse I have to agree. The Kindle is as closed as you make it. You can convert other ebook formats to MOBI using Calibre. I went with the evil that's known, and got a Kindle 2 this weekend. I'm very pleased so far. It's not perfect, but it does what it does really well.

[Fanfoot Posted Dec 1st 2009 2:15AM]

@ZeroCorpse Disagree. The Sony and Nook both have native support for ePub, which is as close to a universal standard as their is in this market. The Kindle does not.

[magallanes Posted Nov 30th 2009 3:49PM]

"...and the #1 bestselling product across all product categories on Amazon"

Ok, it can sound that *currently* Kindle is a best seller, but i doubt that it is the best seller item (of all time), specially in comparison with Harry Potter books.

[tekkenfighter123 Posted Nov 30th 2009 6:20PM]

Sure, I'm going to believe it's outselling MODERN WARFARE 2? I seriously doubt that. In any case. I do love the Kindle. I wasn't sure if I should have got it at first, since I don't read all that much, but I read daily now. LOL I love that little thing, even tho it's ugly as sin. What do they insist on making products white?

[Fanfoot Posted Dec 1st 2009 2:18AM]

@tekkenfighter123 It doesn't mean its outselling Modern Warfare. It just means that its outselling it on Amazon. And even then only at some arbitrary moment in time (like before MW2 was released maybe). MW2 is being sold EVERYWHERE. Not sure what percentage of sales is coming from Amazon but given you can buy it at 7-ELEVEN or download it digitally I'll bet the percentage isn't that high.

[gilez Posted Nov 30th 2009 10:22PM]

..nice to read some news from the Italian "Il Corriere della Sera".. with Berlusconi telling some more lies..

[AM321CAN Posted Nov 30th 2009 10:47PM]

why pay 260 dollars for a book that doesn't come with any pages unless i buy them? it better have 26 fantabulous books preloaded on it

[anus1220 Posted Nov 30th 2009 11:18PM]

Really? Because I only just recently (less than a week ago) had my first encounter with one in the wild, and it was in a Jersey City Path station.

[WeirdHero Posted Dec 1st 2009 1:09AM]

Kindle is like the iPhone/iTunes of books.
Just another closed platform that can easily exploit the consumer...

[Dan Fruzzetti Posted Dec 1st 2009 2:58PM]

OK But are e-readers the best selling CATEGORY on Amazon? I understand that Kindle is one of the only full-service ebook readers Amazon sells, and in that consideration we recognize it should be taken as a category.

[JBDragon Posted Dec 1st 2009 10:31PM]

I got my Kindle Early November, I really like it.

[JohnnyReynolds Posted Dec 6th 2009 9:48AM]

if you're the Amazon Kindle, it turns out -- it's currently the bestselling product across all categories at Amazon. Recently I came to know that there is a website named AmazingWatcher.Com which is a free website that will “watch” items for you on Amazon and let you know when amazon has them in stock at regular retail price.It got so awesome!
Good luck everybody!