Kindle 2 Introduced: Blasphemy for Booklovers?

March 10, 2009— -- While working for a hedge fund doing research on the Internet 14 years ago, Jeff Bezos had an idea, a big idea: The Internet, he thought, would be a good place to sell books.

He borrowed $300,000 from his parents -- who he said had one question: "What is the Internet?"

With his wife at the wheel, Bezos, the CEO of Amazon.com, headed west to Seattle, writing the company's business plan as he went.

Bezos launched Amazon.com, now a multibillion-dollar company, from his garage, and revolutionized the sale of books.

But while Bezos built his company around books, today he said he thinks that books in their current form are becoming obsolete, and he's giving them a shove off the shelf with a gizmo that does away with the need for paper and ink.

But Bezos says he's not announcing the death of the book.

"I am here to announce the birth of Kindle 2," which he thinks can co-exist with old-fashioned books -- for now, at least.

The Kindle 2 is the latest E-reader, manufactured and sold by Amazon. Books are downloaded to the device, which can hold up to 1,500 titles at a time. It is sleek and convenient, but not cheap, costing a whopping $359.

"You can do things with Kindle which you could never do with a paper book," he said. "For example ... there are 240,000 books on Kindle including 104 of the 111 New York Times Best Sellers. These are books people are reading. And when you see an author being interviewed on TV on a show at night, 60 seconds later you can be reading their book."

"Look, nothing goes away, but things do change," Bezos said. "There are things we have nostalgia for and I do, too. Like almost everybody I grew up with -- my parents reading to me as a small child.

"If you go back 14 years, no one was asking for an online bookstore," he said.

Bezos says he picks up a book for its content, not because of the physical object itself.

"It's the narrative," he said, "it's the story that's being told. And the book, the physical object is a technology and all technologies improve over time and that's what we're trying to do with Kindle."

Over time, Bezos explains, E-books will be the only way people read books. And while the notion may sound far-fetched, he has a pretty good record of predicting the future. Early on, Bezos understood the key to success wasn't just what Amazon sold, but how they sold it.

"We operate Amazon as a customer-centric company," he said. "We try and figure out what customers want, and then give it to them. And you need to listen to the customers to do that, but you also need to invent on their behalf. [It's] not a customer's job to invent for themselves.

"Books are a 500-year-old technology," he said. "It's had a really good run."