It has been 14 months since I monitor Kindle book store size on a daily basis. I started it in April 2009. Back then Kindle software 2.0.2 was just released, Amazon was being sued by Discovery Communications and Amazon itself was sending DMCA takedown notes to MobileRead.com, Fujitsu FLEPia was expected to take eReader market by storm with it’s color eInk and first rumors about what would become 9.7″ Kindle DX surfaced. Kindle Book Store just broke 250,000 book margin back then…
Now there are 510,000+ books in Kindle Store and counting. I used to publish Kindle book numbers on a monthly basis but then I got lazy. It is time to fix this and publish all 14 months worth of data at once!
As you can see, the book count was increasing in more or less linear fashion. There may be some seasonality or irregularities to it. Hard to say since one year is clearly not enough to spot seasonal trends (if they exist in publishing industry).
| Month | Book Count |
|---|---|
| March, 2009 | 242,488 |
| April, 2009 | 258,210 |
| May, 2009 | 274,996 |
| June , 2009 | 295,420 |
| July, 2009 | 309,410 |
| August, 2009 | 336,865 |
| September, 2009 | 349,661 |
| October, 2009 | 342,556 |
| November, 2009 | 368,748 |
| December, 2009 | 385,497 |
| January, 2010 | 401,894 |
| February, 2010 | 415,370 |
| March, 2010 | 451,280 |
| April, 2010 | 480,277 |
| May, 2010 | 509,349 |
It’s good to see the rising trend in e-book titles. I love my Kindle 2 and am hoping that the iPad doesn’t take over everything. It will interesting to see the number of books for Amazon Kindle and the number of books in the iPad iBooks store in the next few months. Maybe you could start posting comparisons of the two.
Much more books than the competition! Nice
Much more books than the competition! Nice
At the end of the format wars (kindle/ibook/nook) if history repeats itself the one with the most varied content will win.
It has happened many times BlueRay/HDDVD Betamax/VHS, Game Consoles, etc. Another factor in these format wars has been price, but since the stupid agency models all ebook stores have similar pricing, so it won’t matter.