After being greeted with much initial doubt the e-reader, by Amazon, The Kindle is a big hit. Oprah’s endorsement certainly helped and the $359 device is sold out, on back order now. USA Today became the latest newspaper to be sold on The Kindle, joining a list of about 29 other papers.
The Nieman Journalism Lab is reporting that the NY Times has 10,000 subscribers, which begs the question which Canadian Newspaper will be the first to be published on The Kindle? Or better yet, why isn’t there a Canadian Newspaper on The Kindle right now?
NYT’s 10K subscribers on Kindle: The start of something bigger?
One other important note from that internal New York Times memo my colleague Zach got a hold of: The company reports it has “more than 10,000 paid subscribers” to an electronic edition of the newspaper on Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader. To my knowledge (please correct me if I’m wrong), that’s the first time a major newspaper has released numbers on how it’s doing on Kindle — a platform lots of newspaper execs are eager to see turn into a saving grace for their industry.
Given that the electronic Times costs $13.99 a month, that would mean the NYT Kindle edition is generating in the neighborhood of $1.68 million a year. How much of that goes to NYT Co. and how much stays with Amazon is unclear.
