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!

Green Books Campaign: The Evolutionary Glitch by Dr. Albert Garoli

This review is a late addition to the Green Books campaign. 200 bloggers took a stand on November 10, 2010 to support books printed in an eco-friendly manner by simultaneously publishing reviews of 200 books printed on recycled or FSC-certified paper. By turning a spotlight on books printed using eco- friendly paper, we hope to raise the awareness of book buyers and encourage everyone to take the environment into consideration when purchasing books.

The campaign is organized for the second time by Eco-Libris, a green company working to make reading more sustainable. We invite you to join the discussion on "green" books and support books printed in an eco-friendly manner! A full list of participating blogs and links to their reviews is available on Eco-Libris website.

The book we review as part of the Green Books campaign is:

The Evolutionary Glitch: Rise Above the Root of Your Problems

Author: Dr. Albert Garoli
Albert Garoli is a proficient health practitioner, medical researcher, and educator. He is a specialist in Ayurvedic medicine, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Acupuncture, Herbology, Biophysics, and Homotoxicology. Currently, he is teaching in the Italian College of Osteopathy (C.I.O) as well as the Italian School for Oriental Medicine (ScuolaTao), in convention with University Sapienza of Rome. He is also the director of the Holonomics cooperative project. His many years of experience have brought him to a revolutionary understanding of human neurobiology which is clearly explained in his new book: The Evolutionary Glitch.

Publisher: Loving Healing Press

Published on: January 2010

What this book is about?
Ever wonder what it is that keeps holding you back?
Deep within the constructs of your brain, a superimposed identity has been formed. This "glitch", embedded in your neural network through the evolution of brain development, is an acquired Persona which perpetuates itself by constantly creating problems and limitations in your life. The Personal thinks for you, acts for you, and even learns for you, but it is NOT the real YOU! In this revolutionary book, you will discover which of the six major types of Personas you have unwittingly acquired, and you will learn how to free yourself from the power it has over you. Like a remedy for an illness,

The Evolutionary Glitch serves as a guide to confronting and rising above the root of your problems. Drawing on ancient wisdom as well as the latest discoveries in neurobiology and quantum physics, The Evolutionary Glitch will radically change the way you see yourself and the world around you.

Learn the skills you need to...

Uproot the Persona you have acquired

Break the problem-causing patterns in your life

Follow the "signs" in your life

Identify your true nature

Do what you were born to do

If you are ready to discover what is hidden behind the mask of your Personal, free yourself from your problems, and live your life with purpose and direction, The Evolutionary Glitch could be the most important book you've ever read.

What we think about it?
Reading this book I found myself thinking many times thinking about Ken Wilber's books. Like Wilber, Garoli's unique work is insightful, complex, inspiring and embedding Eastern and Western philosophy. Like Wilber's work, this book is taking you to an interesting journey of self-exploration that you know where it starts and you have no idea where it will end.

This book, at least for me, was something that should be consumed in small pieces to get the most out of it. I read sentences such as "While your Persona lies strong, your deductive capabilities are too biased and cannot function as a reliable source of observation" and need to put the book aside for a little while and digest what I just read. If I compare it to food, this is by no means a light snack or a quick lunch, but more of a long and gratifying French-style dinner.

Garoli presents in this book an holistic approach based on physics, philosophy, neurobiology and physiology uncovering the 'glitch' in our nervous system and providing a detailed road map to get ourselves better and get rid of these flaws.

If you're willing to dig deeper into yourself and explore the roots of your own persona, break down familiar patterns and find ways it seems we already lost to natural well being, this book is for you. It doesn't have in it the secret for happy life or some vague promise to fix all your problems in 12 simple steps, but it does include an invitation to a unique journey inside your own mind and body that can result in beneficial self-discoveries.

Last but not least, this book is printed on FSC-certified paper!

Disclosure: We received a copy of this book from the publisher.

If you're looking for other interesting green books, please check out the Green Books Campaign's page at www.ecolibris.net/greenbookscampaign2010.asp .

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

The Guinness World Records - how one ebook can save printing 1.15 billion pages a year?

I read some good news for the environment today: Chris Meadows reported on TeleRead that Guinness World Records was just published in an e-book edition, including "288 pages of 4,000 world records, including new and updated versions, as well as classic records."

Why it's good news for the environment? Because no matter how uncertain we are about the greenness of e-books (and we still are), there are some books that should be transformed to e-book format no matter what. Guinness World Records is one of them.

Now, don't get me wrong. I loved this book when I was a kid, but I'm not sure how many people still open the book to find information on these records at the age of the Internet. According to Amazon.com "Over 100 million copies have sold since the first edition was published in 1955. Nearly 4 million copies are sold every year in more than 100 countries and in 25 languages."

Quick calculation brings me to 1.15 billion pages that were printed for this book in 2010 alone. That's a lot of trees as well, which can be saved if this information will be available electronically. It's not just the fact that it's a thick book that makes it a good candidate for e-book format, it's also and mainly the fact that it's updated every year. In such situations, I believe that with the exception of libraries, it's a win-win-win for the consumers, the publisher and the environment to have this book only available as an ebook.

The eBook edition is published by Hachette Book Group, which also distributes the print edition.
Samantha Fay, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Guinness World Records had this statement quoted on eBookNewser: “We are all excited at Guinness World Records to debut our first eBook in North America. We have watched the rise of the eBook market with interest, and in Hachette found the perfect partner to faithfully convert our complex and inspiring title so the 2011 Edition can be enjoyed for the first time in digital form.”

Well, I hope that we'll have many more years of interesting records, such as the longest banner flown by a helicopter (4,166.72 m²), collected by Guinness World Records and provided to us electronically with a new record of trees cut down to print the Guinness World Records - zero.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

WWF is presenting a new unprintable PDF format to save trees

WWF came up with an interesting idea that will help us to save paper: An unprintable new PDF format, which is named after them -WWF.

Why we need a new PDF that can't be printed? They explain:

Every day, entire forests are cut down to make paper. Paper that’s senselessly used to print out documents all over the world: websites, emails, even entire books, in spite of the fact that it's easy to avoid printing by saving the document as a PDF. But even PDFs can sometimes also be printed out. So to stop unnecessary printing and encourage a new awareness about the use of paper, we’ve developed a new, green file format: WWF. A format that can’t be printed out. A simple idea that saves trees. Join in. Decide for yourself which of your documents don’t need printing - and save them as WWF.



You can download the new WWF format from their website, though at the moment it is only avilavle for Macs (it should be available to Windows soon).

I like this idea. We definitely print too many files than we really have to, and these sort of formats can make it easier on us to decide not to print, simply because we can't.. What do you think? Will you be using the WWF? We'll be happy to hear your thoughts about it.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

Where will readers buy their ebooks? Eco-Libris is following Google's search results

So where will readers look to buy their ebooks? Following the launch of Google eBookstore, its relationships with independent bookstores and Amazon's reply, the answer to this question looks unclear than ever. Or is it not?

We decided to check it out and do a little experiment. We believe that many readers will look for ebooks using a search engine and will buy from one of the first results in their search.

So we randomly chose 10 books of the New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2010, opened Google webpage, typed each title with the word ebook and wrote down the first two results we got. We will redo it every Thursday for 10 weeks and see if there are going to be any changes in the search results.

Our assumptions were that Amazon will get the most results now, but within 10 weeks we'll see Google winning the first or the second place on at least 20% of the cases. We do expect to see some presence of the publishers' websites and none of Independent bookstores' websites.

So let's begin. Here are the results for week 1 (If you click on the titles, you will be forwarded to the first place on the title's search):

1. Girl by the Road at Night by David Rabe
1st place: Simon & Schuster (publisher)
2nd place: Simon & Schuster

2. The Long Song by Andrea Levy
1st place: Amazon.com
2nd place: Amazon.com

3. The New Yorker Stories by Ann Beattie
1st place: Amazon.com
2nd place: Amazon.com

4. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
1st place: Amazon.com
2nd place: Random House (publisher)

5. Big Girls Don't Cry by Rebecca Traister
1st place: Simon & Schuster (publisher)
2nd place: Simon & Schuster

6. The Price of Altruism by Oren Harman
1st place: Amazon.com
2nd place: Amazon.com

7. INSECTOPEDIA by Hugh Raffles
1st place: Amazon.com
2nd place: Random House

8. Country Driving by Peter Hessler
1st place: Barnes & Noble
2nd place: goodreads

9. The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
1st place: Random House (publisher)
2nd place: Barnes & Noble

10. Hitch 22 by Christopher Hitchens
1st place: Amazon.com
2nd place: Barnes & Noble

As you can see Amazon is the leading website right now in these searches, winning the 1st place 6 times (60%) and the 2nd place 3 times (30%). Publishers showed relatively surprising strength, winning the first place 3 times (30%) and the 2nd place 4 times (40%). Barnes & Noble
got one time to the first place (10%) and two times to the second place (20%).

So far no big surprises, but let's see how things will move forward in the next couple of weeks. We'll wait for Google to show us what it can do - after all, its Google's search engine..See you next Thursday!

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

Simon Buckingham of Appitalism.com talks about the future of ebooks following the launch of Google eBookstore

This is getting to be a very interesting week in the ebook marketplace, following the launch of Google eBookstore on Monday.

How the new eBookstore will shape the future of ebooks is still unknown, but we (as everyone else) are still very curious about it, so we asked one of the experts in the ebook industry, Simon Buckingham, founder and CEO of Appitalism.com to share with us his thoughts on the new eBookstore and its influence on the market.

Hello Simon. What do you think would be the most significant influence of the new Google eBookstore on the ebook marketplace?
While the Nook, Sony Reader and other e-readers have been moderately successful, Amazon has largely dominated the ebook marketplace. Is Amazon's ebook model the best one for consumers? We don't know because Amazon and the Kindle have not faced stiff competition. If successful, the most significant accomplishment of Google Editions will be that it brought healthy competition to the ebook marketplace.

You mention that "Google Editions, like Appitalism, is platform and device agnostic and that freedom gives consumers access to their e-books from any device with internet connectivity", which is true to all devices except the Kindle - who do you think it hurts more - Amazon or Google?
This is not necessarily an either/or scenario. If you look to the mobile market, both the iPhone and the devices powered by Android are wildly successful. Similarly, I think there is enough space in the future of ebooks for both Amazon and Google to co-exist amidst healthy competition.

What will be the influence of Google eBookstore on online sellers such as Appitalism?
If Google eBookstore is successful, consumers will increasingly feel more comfortable purchasing ebooks from a wide variety of sites, including Appitalism. The ebook marketplace is expanding rapidly and bringing new consumers into the fold is beneficial for all ebook retailers

Do you think the collaboration of Google with the independent bookstores can help them to thrive? Can it help them to transform their brick and mortar bookstores back into an asset?
The independent bookstores certainly feel like in aggregate they can leverage Google's resources to help them compete with larger chain stores and I am inclined to agree. Independent bookstores are closing across the country, so it is wise for them to innovate using Google. They have little to lose and everything to gain. Google eBookstore is not a panacea however, and I'm leery of anyone who thinks Google eBookstore alone will restore the health and viability of local independent bookstores.

What will be considered by Google a success here? How do they plan to achieve it?
The first mark that must be met is sustainability and viability. Google's model is untested and there are plenty of pitfalls, including publishers unwilling to agree to Google's term for example. It doesn't have to be pretty, but if Google can simply keep Google eBookstore functional and even somewhat competitive over the next 12 months, they have the resources to help the venture grow quickly. As with all things Google, they plan to achieve success by employing the smartest people and having a ton of funding.

In all, is last Monday going to be remembered as a milestone in the book marketplace or just as a day when another new online bookstore was launched?
Google Editions was launched without much pump, but if this model proves to be successful then I think it would help revolutionize digital content and truly bring it to the masses. In retrospect this launch could be Google's most important - for revolutionizing the way we acquire and read content.

Will you buy ebooks at the new store?
Of course! As an entrepreneur and CEO of a digital content provider, I would be remiss not to test out Google's new offering. I am interested to see the user interface, the ease of use and plenty of other aspects of the business.

Why would a consumer choose Appitalism for their ebooks?
Just like you don't shop at Costco because you want Coke, you wouldn't shop at Appitalism just because you want ebooks. I want consumers to choose to come to Appitalism for ebooks, music, apps and digital content because they know that across the board we deliver the best possible value and service.

What types of ebooks are available on Appitalism?
Appitalism carries content from all of the major publishers as well as a large number of independent publishers. Our catalog has all the classic books you would expect and the library is regularly updated with the newest releases. Our books are all in ePub format and so can be read on almost any device (excluding the Kindle).

Thank you, Simon!

About Appitalism.com:

Appitalism.com combines a social community with an online store, enabling consumers to discover, discuss and download digital media from a catalog of over ten million premium apps, songs, books, games and videos compatible with a broad range of digital devices including smartphones, tablets, PCs and eBook readers. Simply put, there is no better way to discover and download apps and digital content than on Appitalism.com

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

Green book of the week: ZooBorns by Andrew Bleiman and Chris Eastland

Today we review a great book for both kids and parents and actually anyone who is an animal lover.

Our book is:

ZooBorns

Authors: Andrew Bleiman and Chris Eastland

Andrew Bleiman is a lifelong animal nerd who serves on the Auxiliary Boards of the Lincoln Park Zoo and Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. He also runs Zooillogix.com, a bizarre zoology news blog on the ScienceBlogs Network (a division of Seed Media). In his day job he develops new media strategy for the Bradford Group.

Chris Eastland is a classically trained artist and photographer, who studied and taught at the Charles H. Cecil Studios in Florence, Italy, and now lives in Brooklyn. Chris was formerly the Photography Editor for Quest Magazine.

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Published on: November 2010

What this book is about? (from the publisher's website)
ZooBorns showcases the newest and cutest animal babies from accredited zoos and aquariums around the world. With interesting animal facts and background stories on the featured babies, ZooBorns illustrates the connections between zoo births and conservation initiatives in the wild.

What we think about it?
Animals are cute by nature (well most of them..) and as you can guess there's nothing cuter than little animal babies. And this book is full of them. Kit the Sea Otter, Miki the Beluga Whale, Menari the Sumatran Orangutan and many many more. They're all really adorable - my little toddler was fascinated and didn't want to leave the book for a long time (well, at least until dinner was ready).

But as Dr. Paul Boyle, Senior VP for Conservation and Education at the Association of Zoos and Aquariums writes in the introduction to the book "these adorable youngsters are much more than just cute, furry faces. Baby animals born at zoos and aquariums represent new hope for their species in the wild. By studying rare or elusive species, zoo and aquarium researchers develop new conservation strategies for wild populations."

This book is definitely more than just a photo book of cute animals. It provides you important information on the status of the species and introduces you to many species that at least I wasn't aware of (have you heard of Aye-ayes that are considered bad omens by local villagers who persecute these rare creatures?).

I like how ZooBorns combines serious and important information with fun stories, like showing you the little cute crowned Sifaka that has a stuffed teddy bear for comfort. It's a great way to get both kids and their parents engaged, educate them and let them think of the challenges animals are dealing with and our interactions as humans with these animals, as well as our responsibility to be more considerate in the way we live to make sure these great animals will keep being around.

Final green comment: Inside the book, published by Simon & Schuster, there is no mention of the paper the book is printed on, so I can't know for sure if it is printed on environmental paper or not. Having said that, given Simon & Schuster paper policy, there's a good chance it is printed on recycled or FSC-certified paper. In any event, due to the topic of the book, we thought it earns the right to be part of our green books recommendations.

Disclosure: We received a copy of this book from the publisher.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!