Parsing fuzzy data from e-book giants

A visitor tests out a Kobo e-reader at the Frankfurt International Book Fair in 2010. (Daniel Roland/AFP/Getty Images)

Winning over some high-profile, former-skeptic authors, e-books gained greater recognition and a larger foothold in popular culture in 2011. And, according to companies like Kobo and Amazon, sales of digital books and e-readers soared over the holidays.

Kobo logged "record sales for the holiday season," the company announced in a statement Thursday. It follows Amazon's boast a week ago that it sold "millions of Kindle Fires and millions of Kindle e-readers."

Let's face it, these kinds of pronouncements are basically half bragging, half bait -- kudos for those who've just joined a particular brand's fanbase, plus a bit of peer pressure for those who have yet to dive in ("Don't get left behind!"). It's not unlike Activision touting the latest blockbuster launch of its most recent Call of Duty release -- except for that fact that the gaming company actually reports its sales figures (first-day numbers included).

Amazon's hazy post-holiday announcement has developed somewhat of a reputation for the slippery manner of outlining its sales -- namely through splashy-sounding references that don't actually reveal hard data.

For instance, Amazon's statement never really gets around to specifying exactly how many e-readers it sold -- the closest we get is the info that customers "purchased well over one million Kindle devices per week" in December.

Kobo seems to be following in Amazon's fuzzily worded footsteps. Among the "key metrics" noted in Thursday's statement:

• The company saw a "5X increase in purchases from the previous biggest weekend (also in December)." A five-time increase on what?
• "Gifting of e-books was up over 200 per cent compared to same time last year." Again, an increase of 200 per cent on what? No figures -- for 2011 or 2010 -- were listed.
• Among its international successes, Kobo saw "over 7,000 per cent growth" in France. One wonders, however, what the company is using for comparison since Kobo just recently announced its partnership with French bookseller Fnac to participate in the French e-book market.

Full disclosure: I'm a fan of all things tech and love reading on my tablet of choice -- be it a book, a magazine, an online article or an essay. I enjoy the instant access it provides to such a wide range of content. But I do think these strangely worded, mildly suspicious and labyrinthine releases from e-book giants do little to help win over the digital-reading holdouts.