Ever since Amazon starting put the estimated “x number bought in past month” metric at the top of most product pages on their website, I find it interesting to use those numbers to see how well Kindles are selling.
Right now it’s not looking good for the Kindle Colorsoft. After it was released it had a 10k+ sold number like the Kindle and Kindle Paperwhite, despite all the bad reviews initially about the infamous yellow band of light.
Then the sales numbers started to dip under 10k, but then they put the Kindle Colorsoft on sale a couple of times earlier this year at $50 off and the number went back up to 10k+ briefly.
The last sale ended about a month ago, and since then the Kindle Colorsoft’s sales numbers have plummeted drastically to just 5k+ units sold in the past month.
You might think it’s just a down time of year for buying Kindles, but the sales numbers for the Kindle and Kindle Paperwhite haven’t dipped below 10k+. In fact, there are two colors for the base Kindle and each has sold 10k+, so it’s at 20k+ at least.
The 16GB Kindle Paperwhite comes in three colors, and all three of those have sold 10k+ units. The Signature Edition also comes in three colors. Black has sold 10k+, Jade has 7k+ and Pink has 4k+. So between the 6 Paperwhite variants Amazon has sold well over 50k units during the past month, and that’s not including the kids variants or the bundle packages.
Considering the fact Amazon appears to cap Kindle sales numbers at 10k+ (they never go above that), they’re likely selling way more than 50k Paperwhites per month. Plus they’re selling at least 20k basic Kindles per month. And yet the Colorsoft is only selling at a rate of 5k units over the past month?
That’s not good for Amazon’s color Kindle. As bad as that sounds, the sales numbers for the Kindle Scribe are even worse. It’s interesting how the Kindle and Kindle Paperwhite appear to sell like hot cakes year round, while Amazon’s newer upgraded models with unique features are far less popular.
The fact that Amazon priced the Kindle Colorsoft so high certainly has something to do with the lower sales volume, but you’d think there would be more interest in Amazon’s first color Kindle so soon after it was released. Apparently most people still prefer black and white E Ink screens for reading—somebody should tell that to Kobo.
I preferred Kindle screens to all others for several generations. Something about them just looked so good to my eyes. But the urine yellow tint of my PW5 has sent me back to my PB HD3. I haven’t tried Colorsoft yet and probably won’t after that experience. I hope they bring back the great looking screens in the next product cycle.
They added even more yellow to the pw 12th gen. and I think that reduces contrast especially when I compared to Voyage with more neutral b/w. Adding and mixing red frontlight is not great with that tint -brown instead of reddish) so I find that choice puzzling. But I noticed many people prefer that surprisingly and few reviewers seems to mind either.
On the other hand Colorsoft has a much more neutral w/b.
That’s interesting. It could be a good change that just isn’t to my taste. I prefer brands that let me run koreader without a jailbreak anyway, so maybe it’s a good change for me too.
The Kindle Colorsoft is excellent for reading Graphic Novels than an iPad where the colours are to bright and vibrant for the reader.
CORRECTION: My OP was about the PW6. The PW5 was great and my wife still uses it. Sorry about the careless post.
For all the grief that the Kindle gets, some well deserved. Here’s a thought…
I just got a PW6 and I’m very pleased with it coming from a PW3 and a Kobo Aura HD.
If you kept the box for your Kindle, now imagine a warehouse with 10,000 Kindle box’s all neatly stacked and keep in mind that this is the amount sold for just one month. Now imagine all these Kindles being built. I’m sure in some sort assembly line fashion… Again all neatly stacked probably on pallets of some sort ready to be shipped out. Point being, it’s really quite amazing that they work as well as they do. I got a good one, so far anyway… 50,000 Kindle’s – That’s a lot of Kindle’s
I want to get a Colorsoft, and would already have one, but I absolutely will not until the yellow banding is 100% resolved.
It stands to reason that there’s a bell curve in sales, though. The more expensive Kindles will sell fewer than the more value-priced Paperwhite, whereas the difference in cost between the Basic and Paperwhite is smaller and an easier justification for people to spend a little more to get a much nicer device, whereas color is a harder value prop to sell, and the larger size of the Scribe makes it a niche device.
For example, the Kobo Libra Colo(u)r, which is the closest competitor to the Colorsoft (and even lower-priced) has only sold 1K+ in the past month. Does that make the device a dismal failure? Of course not.
The Kobos have been out of stock a lot lately, though, and they have multiple listings for them so it’s harder to compare, but yeah they’re never going to be in the same league as Kindles and they’re still considered successful products. 5k would be a great number for the Libra Colour if it could hit that, which I don’t think it ever has. It just shows how much more dominate Kindles are in the market.
Given up on my Scribe since the recent update. That persistent icon is just too distracting. There is a way around this (ask if you want to know), but I generally can’t be bothered. I actually haven’t reverted to my Paperwhites either. Now reading on my Android tablet which I prefer for this task to my iPad. I’m actually enjoying this method. Screen isn’t bothering me at all. It’s smooth and fast and I can highlight in different colours. Even if they fix the Scribe at some point, I’m not certain I’ll use it again.
I can’t believe they haven’t issued a fix for that yet. It just shows they really don’t care.
Yes, I’m interested in learning the workaround. It makes me crazy too!
I posted about a workaround but it’s no longer that easy, but the same principal applies with some extra steps. Basically, you can use the older Kindle format to avoid seeing the icon.
Yup. Simply convert your books to AZW3 (do that even if they are already in AZW3) via Calibre and then sideload to your Scribe by hooking it up to your computer. Won’t see a cover and can’t export your highlights and notes, though. But there is no icon and that’s a big relief. However, having multiple copies of one’s books is a pain. I’m happy reading on a tablet at present. Heaven knows what Amazon were thinking with this update. Beyond stupid.
Do you know if AZW3 allows 2 column view when reading in landscape?
Kaleb, can’t reply to your post for some reason so replying here instead:
Layout options when sideloaded in AZW3
Orientation – Not available
Alignment – Not available
Column – Not available
Margins – Available
Spacing – Available
So no to two columns in landscape.
Correction: Orientation *is* available.
Thanks for the reply on what layouts are available!
I haven’t been bothered by the icon but just recently my Scribe stopped showing all the books in my library & only shows half or less of my available books. It’s very noticeable because in collections where I know I have over 500 books the Scribe will show around 200 & so on. Then if I search for books I know I own, on the Scribe they won’t even come up or if they do then it’ll say I don’t own them. Very annoying.
Are these missing books from the Kindle bookstore or have they been sideloaded and really are just documents? I once had a problem with collections and missing books. So long ago I’ve clean forgotten what it was. If I remember, I’ll get back to you.
I had the same issue with my Kindle Scribe. I gave it to my sister, and I purchased the Kindle Colorsoft. The Colorsoft is the only Kindle device that shows all of my purchased eBooks and groups the eBooks by series. The Fire tablet shows all of my eBooks, but it will not let me download some of the eBooks. My problems with the tablet are that the Group by Series feature no longer works and some eBooks will not download. I receive errors. I contacted Amazon customer support, and they were stumped by the issues. I gave up and just use the Colorsoft for reading.
E-ink with a color filter layer is just not appealing to me. I mostly use my Kindle PW5 to read manga. Muted/inaccurate colors I can accept, but reduced resolution is a deal-breaker.
Colorsoft should have been an Oasis replacement for that price.
Would have perhaps bought it then…