Amazon Divulges Some Critical Numbers at Digital Book World

Most of the big names in electronic reading—Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo—like to keep a lid on all information about things like sales figures on devices, numbers of ebooks sold, and more. So when Amazon’s VP of Kindle Content Russ Grandinetti took the main stage at Digital Book World and enlightened the publishing industry crowd about some of that information, everyone paid attention.

Some of the most important info graphs that Grandinetti put up demonstrated a possible connection between titles being listed in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library and an increase in sales. The explanation for that rested on the user agreement of KOLL that patrons can only borrow the equivalent of one book per month. The numbers might suggest that rather than wait as much as thirty days to check-out another ebook, Kindle users were opting to buy a book. This seemed to especially be the case when users had already read the first book in a series and had therefore become familiar with the author and the story line.

“Some customers may be willing to try authors and series they might not otherwise have discovered,” explained Grandinetti at DBW. He specifically mentioned The Hunger Games trilogy as an example, with graphs demonstrating that the number of people who first borrowed book later were more likely to purchase the second and third books.

Amazon was there also to discuss some of the newer aspects of Kindle Format 8 and its capabilities for children’s content and graphic novels on the Kindle Fire tablet. Both of those genres are making great headway now that there are inexpensive devices on the market that can tackle the screen size and full-color formats. The video below is from Grandinetti’s highlights of the updated capabilities for graphics-intensive ebooks.