From CNET, David Carnoy's insightful interview with Ian Freed, Amazon's VP for Kindle:
Freed: The American Association of Publishers has said that e-books have grown at about 200 percent year over year. Our sales are growing faster than that, so you can back into what that means in terms of segment share.
CNET: Well, Apple's saying it's got 20 percent market share and I've heard Barnes & Noble saying it's got 20 percent as well, so that would leave you guys with...
Freed: Honestly, something doesn't add up because we're pretty sure we're 70 to 80 percent of the market. So, something, somewhere isn't quite working right. I encourage you to do some more research. Obviously, from the beginning of Amazon we've been very metrics-focused and we don't typically throw out numbers we don't firmly believe in. Take that 70 to 80 percent number and add up all the others and something somewhere isn't going to add up.
Also of importance:
CNET: Now that most publishers have shifted to the "agency model" and are setting their own prices, how have the higher prices on many e-books impacted sales?
Freed: Happy to answer that. We have definitely seen a shift. We have data for the last 15 years on books. And since some of the publishers have decided to price their e-book above $9.99, we've definitely seen a shift of customers going to e-books that are $9.99 or less. The good news for them is that the selection of those books is very dramatic. We have about 630,000 books that are not public domain titles and of those 510,000 are sold for $9.99 or less. Of The New York Times best-sellers, 80 of them are $9.99 or less. So customers are voting with their pocketbook.
