Kindle Already Paying Amazon Back?

Amazon took a huge risk by introducing Kindle a couple of years ago. The e-book market was stagnant at the time, and Sony and other players were not living up to their potential. Amazon Kindle came in and took the market by storm. While it has taken Amazon a while to build a strong base for its gadget, it seems the risk is finally paying off. According to Amazon, the Kindle platform is responsible for a large portion of its book business. Paper books are still king, but Kindle books are catching up fast:

For every 100 books we sell in physical, we sell 48 Kindle books. This is up from 35 books for every 100 in May. Our customers tell us they read more with Kindle because they never have to worry about running out of books.

So Amazon is finally getting the results it expected after investing so much in the Kindle platform. I’d be the first one to tell you that Amazon has not done enough when it comes to taking the Kindle platform to the next level. Perhaps rival companies will push Amazon to innovate again.

Amazon Kindle may not be perfect, but the platform has leveled the playing field somewhat as far as publishers are concerned. Publishers may not be happy with their cuts, but it has given them a great avenue to promote their work further and make money out of their work.

The signs must be encouraging for Amazon for now. E-book readers are still niche devices, so no one expects iPod like numbers from Kindle or Nook. But the market has so much room to grow, and e-books are the future. There will be some resistance, but the younger generation is more open to e-books. As long as Amazon and other e-reader companies continue to innovate, there is no reason e-book readers can’t become more mainstream.