In fact, some readers continue to take great joy in marathon sessions among all those books. They consider a day at their favorite bookstore, grazing amid the racks like bovine in a fertile field, to be time well-spent.
Well, Jeff Bezos isn’t one of them. And the founder of Amazon.com is hoping to rekindle an entire industry by lighting a fire under the 500-year-old book delivery system with a new reading device that has been called the iPod of books.
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“I don’t know why anyone would wait five minutes for a book,” he said, matter-of-factly. “I think you are asking your customers to be very patient.”
He’s hoping impatient readers will part with $359 for his Kindle.
While e-books have been around for a few years, the 2007 release of Amazon’s device represents a notable advance in the availability of the written word. While other such e-books are dependant on sometimes-time-consuming physical connections to computers, readers can download any of 140,000 books on a Kindle in a matter of seconds. The 10-ounce device works over cell-phone networks and does not require WiFi for connection.
Most books are available for download for $9.99 and the Kindle can hold 200 titles, the company says.
Bezos admits that changing the book — which has been more or less the same for centuries — is “an audacious if not arrogant goal.” But then this is the man who is also working on a commercial rocket to blast hitherto earth-bound consumers into space.
The Kindle sold quickly when it was first introduced last fall. Fans point to its portability, the fact that a dictionary and Wikipedia are built right in and features such as the ability to download some book chapters for free.
Support has come from some unlikely, decidedly old media, places. Washington Post Publisher Katharine Weymouth told National Public Radio last month that her 8-year-old daughter is more likely to read more because of it. Bestselling authors James Patterson and Michael Lewis, among others, sing Kindle’s praises on the Amazon Web site.
For his part, Bezos said the idea was to make the content delivery system “disappear.” He says the type on the Kindle looks like ink the page. He notes that it only takes one hand to read — readers can turn the digital page by pressing a button with their thumb. There is no glue holding pages together, no opportunity for paper cuts.
“Some of the flaws in books are invisible to us because we are so used to them,” he said.
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