Bloggers Question Amazon Sales

Yesterday the literary blogosphere surfed a wave of Amazon.com (AMZN) publicity: record-breaking eBook sales, the bookseller’s rising stock price, and a Kindle “bestseller” list stoked with free books. Blogger Mike Cane protested in an essay, urging publishers to “issue a joint press release stating what your largest eBook sellers have been on the Kindle.”

His post generated a stream of comments, including this anonymous post: “I work for a trade house, and while I am not going to reveal my identity or that of my employer, I can tell you that our top Kindle sales of any one title are in the range of about 1000 downloads life to date. I am someone who receives the sales numbers for our titles directly from Amazon and I look at them every week; and, I agree that the actual sales numbers are much LOWER than anyone is pretending to have achieved.”

Our bloggy sibling eBookNewser responded: “If this comment is true, it’s shocking.” What do you think? We’d love to see more publishing folk weigh in on this crucial issue.

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