Amazon says it was a Kindle Christmas - but still no sales figures

To all intents and purposes, Amazon's continuing push into the electronic book market with the Kindle looks unstoppable. Its latest landmark? On Christmas Day, it said, Amazon.com sold more ebooks than paper ones for the first time ever . That well-timed announcement led to a number of glowing media reports. It's good for Amazon that ebook sales appear brisk, but the company still isn't releasing sales figures - which means it's actually a pretty meaningless comparison. Christmas Day, after all, is not peak shopping season, but when you get an empty Kindle from Santa, you're going to need to put some books on it. Without numbers, it's impossible to determine whether or not the Kindle is firing up bookworms - did its record-breaking day involve hundreds, thousands, millions of book sales? Who knows. This is exactly the sort of statistical massage I wrote about last week , in a piece that detailed the guessing game over the Kindle's sales figures and how Amazon cleverly chooses its phrasing to make it sound like the Kindle is everywhere. That may be the case, but when I asked whether readers had seen a Kindle in the wild, sightings, while encouraging, were not overwhelming : Andrys: "[on a recent trip], 4 of the other 10 travelers owned Kindles and 2 more (a couple) had tried to order them from Amazon hoping they'd arrive in Israel where they were at the time." simonsomething : "Never seen a Kindle, but have spotted a couple of Sony eReaders on planes." Reggaestar : "I have seen one on the train on my daily commute." dgsweet : "A recent subway ride in New York -- I was reading a Kindle and my wife was reading a Kindle. As we got off the train, a woman getting on was carrying hers." It's hardly surprising that a company chooses to show itself in the best possible light. Kindle sales may well be very strong indeed. But Amazon has always made a point of trying to appear straight and honest ( Jeff Bezos's forthright apology over the 1984 debacle was one of the best I've seen, for example). Even Apple, the most secretive company I've dealt with, gives out sales figures. And don't forget: finding out how many Kindles are being sold isn't just about checking whether Amazon is telling us the truth

The rest is here: 
Amazon says it was a Kindle Christmas - but still no sales figures