Google web search displays at least 10 million product detail pages on Amazon that match the Kindle Edition specific key phrases.
Ina few weeks, we will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of ebooks. I thought it would be interesting to check out some facts and stats that would say more about the current state of the ebook world.
The size of the largest ebook platform, the Kindle Store, was always on top of how far ebooks can go.
The Kindle Store is mainly populated by ebooks self-published via Kindle Direct Publishing. No other ebook distributor was capable of creating such an effective tool to expand the catalog of books available in a digital format.
Since April 2020, the monthly KDP Global Fund – a total amount of money Kindle authors get for making their books exclusive to the Kindle store – was no lower than $30 million.
In 2017, the total number of books in the Kindle Store was 4.5 million.
Unfortunately, in 2018, Amazon changed the way of displaying the number of items available in a specific category.
Instead of showing the exact number of items, we can now see an estimate. This estimate is almost always limited to 60 or 70 thousand items, no matter how large the product category is. And we know that the Kindle Store holds no less than 4.5 million items that were available in 2017.
Even if you figure out how to get to the list of all books in the Kindle Store, you will see that there are only “over 70,000 results.”
And there are “over 60,000 results” in Biographies & Memoirs category of the Kindle Store, “over 60,000 results” in Teen & Young Adult, and “over 60,000 results” in Mystery, Thriller & Suspense.
Clearly, Amazon found out that total stats were not relevant for end users. “70,000” is not overwhelming, but on the other side suggests the quantity is large enough to find something interesting to read.
Therefore, I decided to try an advanced Google web search to find the total number of publications available in the Kindle Store.
I have used the following keywords to achieve the most accurate number of matching results. All four are put in quotes to force Google to find exact matches. And all four are present only on detail pages of Kindle editions:
- “Format: Kindle Edition” – this phrase is displayed at the end of a title.
- “Word Wise :” – you can find the status of this Kindle exclusive feature in the Product details section.
- “Lending :” – lending is possible only for ebooks, so the status is displayed only in Kindle editions.
- “Print length :” – you can’t find this exact wording in paperback or hardcover editions, for obvious reasons.
Please note, that I have included the colon in search phrases, exactly how it’s shown – with a space before it. This uncommon wording can actually improve the accuracy.
Here is the final search:
site:amazon.com "Format: Kindle Edition" "Word Wise :" "Lending :" "Print length :"
This Google web search returns “About 10,900,000 results” on amazon.com domain.
I have also tried different combinations of other words included in the Product details section for Kindle editions (such as “File size,” “X-Ray,” or “Text-to-Speech”). Every time the number of results was higher than 10 million.
Interested in the Kindle? Keep exploring:
[ef-archive number=5 tag=”kindle”]
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