All right, own up. How many of you bought a loved one a Kindle for Christmas, but forgot to give them a book to go with it?
An awful lot, is the implication of Amazon’s proud announcement that on Christmas Day, for the first time ever, Kindle books outsold paper ones.
The company’s take on this is that the Kindle is “the most gifted item in Amazon’s history” – which (quite apart from the dodgy use of the English language) actually seems pretty implausible. We’d bet they’ve shifted rather more copies of the Bible, say, over the years.
But all the same, what it does show is that e-books are becoming truly mainstream. And when all those people ordering on Christmas Day have finished their current book, they’ll be back to the store for more.
“We are grateful to our customers for making Kindle the most gifted item ever in our history,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. “On behalf of Amazon.com employees around the world, we wish everyone happy holidays and happy reading!”
The company added that on its peak day, December 14, customers ordered over 9.5 million items worldwide – a record-breaking 110 items per second.
