With expectations high for both e-reader sales and e-books over the holiday season, Amazon reported today that, as expected, its Kindle was a hot commodity this month, and that e-books sales broke records. The e-tailer reported that over 1 million Kindle devices were purchased per week in December and that the Kindle Fire, the e-tailer's lower-cost answer to the iPad, is the top bestseller at Amazon. As for e-books, Amazon said that "gifting" of Kindle books was up 175% from Black Friday 2011 and Christmas day, as compared to the same period last year.
Amazon also reported that the two bestselling Kindle books of the year, both self-published, are Darcie Chan's The Mill River Recluse and Chris Culver's The Abbey. Also as expected, Christmas day proved a wildly popular one for the downloading of e-books; Amazon said December 25 was "the biggest day ever for Kindle book downloads."
Amazon's release about holiday sales is devoid of actual numbers, and the e-tailer regularly categorized sales in other terms. Noting book sales over the holiday period--the e-tailer said it was "holiday timeframe-specific"--Amazon said, for example, that enough copies of Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs were purchased to "create a stack taller than Mt. Everest," but declined to provide actual sales figures for the book.
