Kindle Surprise: eBay, eBooks… eBigBrother?
Surfing Twitter today, we noticed a trending topic we’d never really seen before — “Kindle” — as in, those e-book-reading devices introduced by Amazon a while back. Well apparently, according to several reports, Amazon (per publisher request) remotely deleted all copies of all George Orwell books from every Kindle in existence.
… Which, if you’re familiar with Orwell’s “Big Brother”-themed 1984, you’ll know is just about the most ironic thing, uh, ever.
Anyway, the story got us curious about Kindles in general, and what kinds of sales they’ve had away from Amazon, particularly on eBay. The results, as you can see from this 90-day All Sites total sales trend, speak for themselves:
Honestly speaking, it was hard for some of us to really buy into the Kindle when it launched two years ago; perhaps the technology seemed expensive and hard-to-grasp… perhaps it was plain nostalgia for old musky-sweet paperbacks. In any case, so long as Amazon doesn’t go full-court Big Brother on us, it appears the device is primed to redefine the book-publishing world.
And as for Mr. Orwell, this 60-day total listings trend isn’t looking particularly swell…
… But now surely readers are gonna wanna replace their copies of Animal Farm, right?
Tags: 1984, amazon, animal farm, ebay, george orwell, kindle, terapeak
December 13th, 2009 at 7:04 pm
Was really really skeptical about buying this for my wife. I can easily say it is the single best gift I have EVER gotten for her. She loves it and it has made her pregnancy and these first few months a little easier to cope with. She only needs one hand to use it so it keeps the other available for nursing, holding baby, etc… This has been a godsend for her and the fact it’s bright/easy to use/quick to load up books is great. A