Holiday Season Boosts Amazon's Kindle Sales

During the holiday season, consumers flocked to buy Amazon's Kindle e-readers.

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For the month of December, more than 1 million Kindles were purchased each week, with the new Kindle Fire -- released in mid-November with a retail price of $199 -- claiming the top spot on the best-sellers list on Amazon.com. The Kindle Touch, and the Kindle followed with the No. 2 and No. 3 slots.

Compared to last year's holiday season, Amazon says that gift purchases of Kindle books were up 175 percent during the Black Friday and Christmas period.

The top-selling Kindle book released in 2011 was published independently by the author through Kindle Direct Publishing.

We are grateful to our customers worldwide for making this the best holiday ever for Kindle,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com founder and CEO. “And in a huge milestone for independent publishing, we’d also like to congratulate Darcie Chan, the author of The Mill River Recluse, and Chris Culver, the author of The Abbey, for writing two of the best-selling Kindle books of the year.”

In December, Goldman Sachs estimated that Amazon could sell 6 million units of the Kindle Fire by the end of the year with an additional 8 million units sold of the Kindle.