Amazon Tries to Kindle a Passion for E-books

[alanajoli]

For those of you who haven't yet heard, Amazon has just launched its new e-book reader, Kindle. (Hence the pun in my subject line. I couldn't help myself.) The powers of Amazon and Sprint unite, giving e-book readers wireless access to buy books from amazon from pretty much anywhere. The wireless service has no additional cost. The catch is that it's an Amazon only service: Kindle won't work with other e-books, from everything I've read. It's a strategy that works for Apple--why not Amazon?

Publishers Weekly covered the release today online, and one of their bloggers posted about Kindle's aesthetics. Amazon itself has a very nifty video that you can watch demonstrating the little device's capabilities. It looks pretty impressive. (It also offers full access to wikipedia, presumably for free.) Interesting stuff in the electronic world--and it'll be exciting to see if amazon manages to open the door to e-books for a general audience that hasn't been opened by any of the other readers.

Comments

[stormywriting.livejournal.com]

I don't read ebooks, but this thrilled me just b/c it's totally awesome- assuming it works as claimed, anyhow.