While I’m waiting for the proof copy of the Leica D-Lux 5 book to arrive from Lightning Source, I’ve been checking on the status of the existing books that are being sold on Amazon. One of the more noticeable points is that the Kindle editions seem to be doing quite well. I don’t know exactly how to evaluate the various sales ranks (Kindle vs. print, for example), but the Kindle books seem to be doing somewhat better than the print ones. This makes sense, because the Kindle editions sell for $9.99, while the print ones now are all being sold for $24.95 on Amazon. I wish Amazon would discount the print books as they did in the past, but they don’t seem to be doing this anymore for this sort of book. I would lower the prices myself, but the books are too expensive to print to allow any lower prices. (They are sold to Amazon at a discount from the retail price, so there is not much margin left over after that sale.)

As of about 6:00 p.m. Eastern time, the Kindle version of the book about the Panasonic Lumix LX5 was rated #1 on Amazon.com in the Kindle books category of Arts & Entertainment – Photography – Equipment.  Of course, those rankings fluctuate quite a bit, but it’s nice to know that this book is popular enough to rank first among a fairly large group of books, many of them published by better-known authors and large publishing companies.

The one bit of bad news today is that, for some unknowable reason, the paperback edition of the LX5 book is now listed as “Temporarily Out of Stock” at Amazon.co.uk. I can’t think of any reason why this should happen; the book is being printed by Lightning Source and made available to Amazon in the UK and US (and elsewhere). I think there are computer or “system” glitches that pop up from time to time, but it’s fairly frustrating to see this sort of thing happen, right when people might be interested in ordering the book.  The Kindle version is still available in the UK, and it’s doing fairly well.