Amazon Offers A Few Statistics

You're going to have to bear with me as I catch up on a week's worth of reading material.

I was interested to see Jeff Bezos of Amazon actually offering some statistics on the Kindle--something the company has steadfastly avoided doing for the past two years.

Last Wednesday, in response to a question from The New York Times regarding the percentage of digital books Amazon is selling, Bezos said:

For every 100 copies of a physical book we sell, where we have the Kindle edition, we will sell 48 copies of the Kindle edition. It won’t be too long before we’re selling more electronic books than we are physical books.

In response to a follow-up question about how quickly paper books are migrating into their digital equivalents, Bezos said:

When we launched Kindle two years ago, it was 90,000 titles, and today it’s more than 350,000. We’re adding thousands of titles every week. Our vision is every book ever printed in every language, all available within 60 seconds.

My favorite question-and-answer seemed targeted right at Wal-Mart's bow:

Initially, Amazon sold books exclusively, but it has since expanded into a retail omnivore that sells basketballs and vacuum cleaners and hamster food and everything under the sun. What is your goal, exactly?
We want to have earth’s biggest selection. Earth’s biggest river, earth’s biggest selection.

Go here to read the entire interview.