Why Amazon is so hush hush about the Kindle's sales figures and footprint?

Yesterday I got an email from Amazon with this ad:

Minutes later I read at GalleyCat that "This morning, Amazon revealed they have sold “millions” of Kindles in the last 73 days." How many exactly? Well, Amazon wouldn't tell.

And it got me wonder again about Amazon.com's hush-hush policy.

As you can see Amazon is willing to share with you some facts about the Kindle, such as:

It is Amazon's #1 Bestselling product

It is Amazon's #1 Most-wished for product

It is Amazon's #1 Most-gifted product

What Amazon like to tell you are facts such as:

- How many Kindles it actually sold

- What is the environmental footprint of a single Kindle?

Amazon at best likes to give you hint, such as "in the last 73 days, readers have purchased more Kindles than we sold during all of 2009", which of course is much better than its attitude towards sharing environmental information, where not even one clue is provided.

I guess when it comes to sales numbers, Amazon feels that the guestimation game around the right number (estimations quoted by Geoff Duncan on Digital Trends talk about 4-5 million unit sales for 2010 and 8.4 million in 2011) serves its business and shareholders in the best way possible. When it comes to saying nothing about the Kindle's environmental footprint, I really don't know what to think except that Amazon doesn't really care about it at the moment.

I guess without third-party intervention a-la Wikileaks or a revealing interview with Jeff Bezos, we'll never know why Amazon prefers to adopt hush-hush policy over transparency (like Apple do for example). Anyway, I care less about the reasons. What I really hope is to see change in this policy and this will probably happen only when Amazon will be pressured by shareholder and/or customers to move on and adopt transparency. Real transparency. Until then we're still with the hush-hush policy.

More articles related to this issue:

When will Amazon start being more transparent about the Kindle and their ebook sales?

New report finds Kindle greener than physical books - is that really so?

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Plant a tree for every book you read!

Amazon Kindle is finally here

Amazon finally unveiled today its new wireless reading device - Amazon Kindle.

We have followed the news on the upcoming device and also reported just two weeks ago on the expected delay in its introduction. Today we were happy to read on CNET that it finally happened - Jeff Bezos, Amazon's CEO unveiled Amazon's new electronic book reader at New York's W Hotel.

Kindle is very light and weights only 10.3 ounces. It has a black-and-white screen, a battery that will last several days to a week and a capacity for about 200 books (1,000 books with a slot for a standard SD memory card).

Kindle does not require a PC for synchronization or any software to be installed. The store is actually on the device and is stocking now more than 90,000 titles. Besides books, you can have access with it to magazines, newspapers, blogs and even Wikipedia.

It all sounds really great. The only downside is the price - $399, which makes it a relatively expensive gadget.

Still, it might be the beginning of the digital revolution of books. Bezos said today "Books have stubbornly resisted digitization. I think there's a very good reason for that, and that is, the book is so highly evolved and so suited to its task that it's very hard to displace." He is totally right and the question hanging in the air is whether the Kindle is suited to become a replacement.

My wish is that Kindle won't only become cheaper, but also be manufactured in an eco-friendly manner (right now I only know it's been manufactured by an undisclosed Chinese original equipment manufacturer), hopefully adopting cradle to cradle concepts.

Right now we know it will save a lot of trees and this is good news. If as a devise that is so advanced technologically, it will also become advanced environmentally, it would be great news.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: a great green gift for the holidays!