Amzon’s Kindle E-book reader set a new record during the holiday shopping season

Amazon had a great Christmas holiday season as its Kindle e-book reader became the most gifted item in the company’s history this holiday. On December 26, 2009, Amazon published its “annual post-Christmas statement on holiday sales.” Amazon founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, in a statement said that they are grateful to their customers for making Kindle the most gifted item in the company’s history.” The 2009 shopping season will be memorable for another reason, for the first time, this holiday season, Amazon’s customers bought more e-books than physical books. Unfortunately, the company did not give out any of its sales figures. CNET News reports:

The peak shopping day for the online retailer was December 14, when customers ordered more than 9.5 million items worldwide, "a record-breaking 110 items per second."

Among those items bought between November 15 and December 19, the top electronics, following the Kindle, were Apple's iPod Touch 8GB and the Garmin Nuvi 260W GPS.

The success of Kindle is not related to its quality but the fact that it enables readers to acquire books at cheaper price. Amazon Kindle is not a very attractive device and it does not support all formats meaning the owner can only read books published by Amazon.

The rising popularity of E-books has become a new problem for publishers as it is eating away their profits. Publishers, agents and Amazon are bickering over price and the rights to backlist the titles. Another big problem is- how the publishers are going to pay royalty over e-book? Famous publishing house, Macmillan announced to delay the publication of its e-books and is offering enhancements to counter Amazon’s $9.99 price point.