Looks Like a Million To Me: How I Realized that Amazon's Kindle and Sony's E-Reader Were Exceeding Sales Estimates
By Evan Schnittman … When the Kindle first launched there was plenty of predictions about how it and its predecessor the Sony Reader would sell.
Context & Ripple Effects
When the Kindle launched in late 2007, skeptics treated dedicated e-readers as a niche gadget, and early sales predictions were correspondingly modest. Evan Schnittman's post pushed back, arguing that both Amazon's Kindle and Sony's Reader were quietly outselling their estimates — an early signal that e-reading was a real market rather than a novelty. The subsequent coverage validated that read: Citi estimated 500,000 Kindles sold in 2008 with a $1.2 billion business projected, Kindle 2 sales hit 300,000 within months of launch, and by late 2009 the device was outselling every other product on Amazon.
First-order effects
- Publishers and analysts who had dismissed e-readers as a hobbyist product have to re-baseline demand: Amazon and Sony are selling through inventory faster than planned, forcing production ramp-ups and making e-reader sales a tracked business line rather than a curiosity.
- Evan Schnittman's argument reframes the narrative for the publishing industry — if devices are exceeding estimates, ebook adoption is supply-constrained (by titles and availability) rather than demand-constrained.
Second-order effects
- Competitors pile in: once Kindle demand proves durable — eventually projected at roughly 10 percent of Amazon's business — other hardware makers and retailers must field rival readers and storefronts, compressing prices and accelerating the shift from print to digital units.
- Amazon gains leverage over publishers: a best-selling proprietary device tied to its own bookstore lets it push for lower ebook wholesale terms, setting up the pricing conflicts that define the next decade of publishing.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points toward vertically integrated content ecosystems — hardware sold near cost as a funnel into a digital store — becoming the template for media businesses, later echoed across tablets, streaming, and voice.
- If sustained, e-reader growth forces a structural reordering of publishing economics (digital-first releases, agency vs. wholesale pricing battles) and invites regulatory scrutiny of platform power over book distribution.
The trend: Dedicated e-readers' outselling of conservative estimates marks the moment digital reading crossed from novelty to mass market, foreshadowing the platform-and-content-lock-in model that now dominates consumer tech.