About every three years Amazon releases a new Kindle Paperwhite model, and it doesn’t matter how much they increase the price or how infrequently they put it on sale, it always remains at the top of the list of best selling Kindles.
Right now the Kindle Paperwhite currently holds 6 out of the top 10 spots on Amazon’s Kindle best sellers list. Amazon counts each color separately, and they also count the Signature Edition and its three colors separately. That makes six different versions of the current Paperwhite, and all rank in the top 10.
The base 16GB Paperwhite with the black back is the #1 best selling Kindle. It alone would make the Paperwhite the most popular Kindle, but there are 5 additional versions to add to the overall sales numbers, plus the bundle packages that are also counted separately.
The Kindle Colorsoft is currently sitting at #9 on the list, and it’s basically just a Paperwhite with a color screen. #8 on the list is the wireless charging dock for the Signature Edition and Colorsoft, so technically you could argue the Paperwhite holds more than 6 spots in the top 10.
The Kindle Scribe doesn’t appear on the best selling Kindles list until #17. Even the previous gen Kindle Paperwhite ranks higher than that, and so does the previous gen charging dock and a pack of screen protectors.
At some point Amazon figured out that they don’t even have to put the Paperwhite on sale anymore to keep selling them like hotcakes.
Amazon used to put the Kindle Paperwhite on sale all the time, but now that happens much less frequently, and when they do put it on sale they don’t discount it by as much as they did in previous years.
In fact, the current Kindle Paperwhite has only been on sale three times since it was released last October, and it’s only been on sale once this year (Amazon does put the kids Paperwhite bundle on sale more frequently, though). The upgraded Signature Edition model has only been on sale one time since it was released, and it has yet to go on sale a single time in 2025 (not counting bundle packages).
It’s clear the Paperwhite is the king of Kindles. Say goodbye to page buttons and unique Kindle designs. Five years from now Amazon will probably just be selling three different sizes of the Kindle Paperwhite.
I do like the Paperwhite, having owned three different models in the past 13 years. But I also mourn the truth of the last statement. I hate how Amazon made the Colorsoft a Paperwhite with a color filter. What’s next, a Mini Scribe that is just a Paperwhite with stylus support?
I have the 2024 Paperwhite SE and absolutely love it. It is well worth the cost.
I really didn’t want to upgrade my PW5 to PW6, but I did. And now after two defective units I’m waiting for unit number three with zero expectation for it to work properly :-/ First had defective color coating on screen bezels, second yellowing bottom of the screen like Colorsoft (I tried two Colorsofts too but had to return both). I gotta say I’m surprised by how bad the quality control got. I owned seven Kindles previously and never had any issue with any of them. I just wonder how much these returns are affecting the sales numbers. I doubt that they deduct the number of units sold once they are returned… So technically I recently bought four Kindles, but unfortunately I don’t have a single one of them.
My PW5 has lived for less than 2 years, and then it’s internal storage has died while I was camping in France 🤷 Maybe this is why them Kindles are selling like hot cakes… because they don’t live very long and need to be constantly replaced.