The Kindle Reader’s Advertising Techniques

In RC Planes of rcplanes (February 8, 2010 7:58 am)

What do Stephen King, Hilary Clinton, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Oprah Winfrey have in common? Apart from the ability to scare you on occasion that is. The answer is that they have all, in different ways, provided good publicity for the Amazon Kindle e-book reader.

Oprah was a fairly early adopter. As far back as 2008 she declared that the original Kindle was her “favorite new gadget”. She also interviewed Amazon founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, on her show and gave the Kindle a glowing testimonial. It was a real shot in the arm for Amazon.

Worl best selling author, Stephen King, wrote a special novella – “Ur” – to commemorate the launch of Amazon’s second generation reader, the Kindle 2, in February 2009. The plot, without giving the story away, related to the use of the Kindle itself and what happened when an English teacher bought a Kindle for himself after breaking up with his girlfriend. King read an extract from the book live on stage at the official launch of the Kindle 2. More good publicity for Amazon.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his role as Governor of California, introduced a program to make free digital textbooks available in Californian schools. The program, which has several stages, was first introduced in August of 2009. It appeared that, at least as far as electronic textbooks were concerned, the future had arrived quicker than many people had anticipated. At the end of the day, if Arnie says that they’re a good idea who’s going to tell him he’s wrong?

Also on the subject of education, a Washington think tank – the New Democratic Leadership Council – which numbers Hilary Clinton among its members, released a white paper entitled “A Kindle In Every Backpack”. The paper outlined the benefits of introducing e-book readers and digital textbooks into the in the U.S. education system. Although the report did acknowledge that other devices could be used the fact that the Kindle was not only referenced at various points within the document, but even included in the title, was fantastic publicity for Amazon.

The above examples are no more than four snapshots of the kind of exposure the Kindle reader has managed to achieve. Over the course of 2009, the Kindle generated a huge amount of publicity, chiefly for itself but also for e-book readers as a whole. It’s not too hard to understand how the Kindle has managed to secure a 60% share of the U.S. e-book reader market.

Currently there is no shortage of companies with their own e-book readers on the market. Whilst many of these feature technical specs which, in some areas at least, outperforms Amazon’s Kindle, there just doesn’t seem to be the same buzz about any of them that existed, and to a large extent still exists, around the Kindle. It really is difficult to imagine where the Kindle Killer is coming from – unless Amazon release the Kindle 4 that is.