Amazon.com, Inc. today announced that 2011 was the best holiday ever for the Kindle family as customers purchased millions of Kindle Fires and millions of Kindle e-readers. Authors also continue to benefit from the success of Kindle — the #1 and #4 best-selling Kindle books released in 2011 were both published independently by their authors using Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP).
“We are grateful to our customers worldwide for making this the best holiday ever for Kindle,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com founder and CEO. “And in a huge milestone for independent publishing, we’d also like to congratulate Darcie Chan, the author of ‘The Mill River Recluse,’ and Chris Culver, the author of ‘The Abbey,’ for writing two of the best-selling Kindle books of the year.”
More Kindle holiday facts:
- Throughout December, customers purchased well over 1 million Kindle devices per week.
- The new Kindle family held the top three spots on the Amazon.com best seller charts – #1: Kindle Fire, #2: Kindle Touch, #3: Kindle.
- Kindle Fire is the #1 best-selling, most gifted, and most wished for product across the millions of items available on Amazon.com since its introduction 13 weeks ago.
- Kindle is also the best-selling product on Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.es and Amazon.it this holiday season.
- Gifting of Kindle books was up 175 percent between this Black Friday and Christmas Day compared to the same period in 2010.
- Christmas Day was the biggest day ever for Kindle book downloads.
- Kindle Fire is the best-selling product on Amazon.com’s mobile website and across all of Amazon.com’s mobile applications.
Additional Kindle Direct Publishing successes include:
- December’s #1 best-selling Kindle Direct Publishing book “Wife by Wednesday” was also the #5 overall best-selling Kindle book in December and has appeared on both the USA Today and Wall Street Journal best seller lists. Author Catherine Bybee was formerly an emergency room registered nurse, and has now left her job to focus on writing full-time.
- In 2011, KDP and CreateSpace author CJ Lyons reached #2 on the Amazon best seller list, #2 on the New York Times best seller list, and #4 on the USA Today best seller list. As a former pediatric ER doctor, CJ has lived the life she writes about in her cutting edge suspense novels, and she quit her job in medicine after 17 years to pursue her dream of becoming a full-time novelist. Her latest work includes “Face to Face” and “Hot Water.”
Businesses Selling on Amazon
2011 was also a record-breaking holiday season for businesses that sell on Amazon. Third-party sellers experienced record holiday growth: the number of sellers who exceeded $5,000 in sales during the holiday season increased 44 percent year-over-year. For the year, businesses on Amazon sold hundreds of millions of units worth billions of dollars worldwide.
Scharf Industries, an office supplies and electronics provider, increased its sales on Amazon by over 500 percent this holiday season compared with last holiday season.
“We greatly value the cooperation that we have developed with Amazon,” said Andrew D. Scharf, CMO of Scharf Industries. “They have provided us with the tools necessary to grow our business in a rapid and efficient manner.”
Ken Reiss, the owner of Reiss Innovations, LLC, started with one Amazon Webstore, selling five to 10 mouse pads for the year. Six years later he has a successful eCommerce business, selling through multiple Amazon Webstores. Just this year alone, Reiss saw a 21 percent increase in sales compared with the holiday season last year. He has also increased the number of product listings by 50 percent over 2010 and recently extended his business to Canada.
According to Reiss, one of the most beneficial aspects of his relationship with Amazon is that “It allows me to scale in efficiency. I can devote my time to building vendor relations and growing my inventory, rather than worrying about logistical aspects, such as shipping products.” Reiss currently stores 90 percent of his inventory in Amazon’s warehouses, up from 75 percent last year.
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