Amazon has seen 4x the amount of sales for its popular e-reader line during the past weekend and including Black Friday. This is the normally the weekend holiday shopping swings into full gear and discounts abound for most retailers. Amazons most striking discount was the Kindle DX that was available for only $249.00.
Representatives of Amazon told Good e-Reader today that “Even before the busy holiday shopping weekend, we’d already sold millions of the new Kindle family and Kindle Fire was the bestselling product across all of Amazon.com. Black Friday was the best ever for the Kindle family – customers purchased 4X as many Kindle devices as they did last Black Friday – and last year was a great year,” said Dave Limp, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. “In addition, we’re seeing a lot of customers buying multiple Kindles – one for themselves and others as gifts – we expect this trend to continue on Cyber Monday and through the holiday shopping season.”
Not only was the main Amazon website pulling in record numbers but the trend carried over to the retail sphere where the e-readers are normally available. Two of the winners this past weekend was USA based Target and Best Buy. “This was a great Black Friday for Target and for Kindle Fire, which was the bestselling tablet in our stores on Black Friday,” said Nik Nayar, vice president merchandising, Target. “We’re excited so many guests chose Target as their destination for the new family of Kindle devices and we’re sure Kindle Fire will continue to be at the top of wish lists this holiday season.”
3rd party websites selling Kindle e-Readers, such as the Touch and Kindle Fire were also seeing record orders. Many customers not residing in the USA are out of luck with the latest devices and Shop e-Readers was one company pulling in a large amount of sales to customers in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Europe. Kelly Hannah, a Representative from the company told us, “This last weekend was one of our strongest sales periods for the entire line of Amazon e-Readers, including the Kindle Fire. We are managing to keep up with hundreds of orders from customers all over the world and even throw in 100 free books and a DVD of video tutorials.”
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.