Amazon announced some fantastic response of consumers to the newest Kindle, doing a bit of horn-tooting this week. The retailer says no other Amazon product has had higher sales in the first four weeks of launch.  This announcement is met with speculations :

The company started taking orders for the new Kindle on July 28 and sold out of them just a few days later. Amazon says the Kindle remains its top selling item on Amazon.com, though it has never revealed specific sales figures. The gadget — and dedicated e-readers in general — face a competitive threat from Apple Inc.’s iPad and other slate computers. Though some analysts argue the two devices are in separate categories, Apple markets the iPad as an alternative for reading books and says it has sold more than 3 million of them.

Can this be a general consumer trend towards adopting e-reader rather than conventional reading? The sales trends of other e-reader brands offers some insight. As noted, Amazon competitor Barnes & Noble reported losses for the quarter, but is seeing great e-reader sales anyway.  This recent rise of e-reader sales can also be attributed to the fact that both companies dropped prices earlier this year, with the Apple iPad entering the mix.

See Bert Latamore’s 2-part series for a deeper look at e-reading culture and consequnces:

E-Reading, Multitasking, and a Less Insightful Society, Part 1

E-Reading, Multitasking, and a Less Insightful Society, Part 2