1)  THE NEW NOOK:  Reports are coming in that Barnes and Noble will be releasing their new NOOK on November 7th, a week before the Kindle Fire ships.  If Amazon starts shipping the Fire around November 5th it will be in people’s hands the same day Barnes and Noble releases their new NOOK. Who do you think will get more media coverage?

2)  SHIPPING:  Jeff Bezos said they are producing “millions more” than they originally intended. As ready as Amazon might be, they might become a victim of their own success if they have to ship three million (or more) Fires the same day, on top of all those Kindle Touches, and the rest of business-as-usual (books, merchandise).  Yes, Amazon is possibly the world’s largest retail distributor.  But remember, this is the fourth quarter, Amazon’s busiest time of year.

3)  HEAVY SERVER TRAFFIC:  Headline from October 13th: “Apple iPhone iOS 5 launch stumbles as errors, glitches anger customers.”  Most of these problems were caused by heavy traffic, overloading servers. Amazon needs to avoid this on the first two or threes days that the Fire is released, or they’ll get the same sort of headlines, which is not good for business.  All of the Kindle Fires, arriving the same day, are going to be a sudden and massive traffic hit. Every new Kindle Fire owner is going to want to try out every feature, as well as download their existing libraries of books, music, movies and apps. Over time Amazon’s servers will handle things fine, but those first couple of days may be difficult.

4) START MAKING MONEY:  According to media reports; “The success of Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet is catching up with the company before the device has even shipped. The company announced on Tuesday that profits would take a hit during the December quarter, likely because of the Fire, and investors punished the stock, sending AMZN down more than 12%, erasing more than US$13 billion in valuation in the process.”  The costs of the Fire have already been incurred. The sooner Amazon ships the Fire the sooner people start using them to buy things and Amazon starts making revenues from the Fire, thus making Amazon’s 4th quarter rosier, reassuring the stockholders and Wall Street.

5) SILK’S REPUTATION:  The sales pitch about the Amazon Silk browser being fast wouldn’t be well-served if it seemed to be slow out of the gate because of heavy traffic. If Amazon ships a hundred thousand a day for the week leading up to November 15th it spreads out the demand. Plus the buzz about the Kindle Fire across the internet would last all week.