Book of the future has batteries included

Reuters

AMAZING: The battery-operated Amazon Kindle lets users download books, newspapers and blogs over a wireless connection. It can carry about 200 books downloaded from Amazon.com, the world's largest web retailer.

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Amazon.com changed the way the world buys its books and now it wants to change the way the world reads them.

The US-based web retailer has launched a new wireless $US399 ($NZ528) electronic book reader dubbed the Kindle, a name intended to evoke a sense of igniting knowledge.

The device is the latest attempt in a decade-long quest to deliver an electronic consumer gadget that will allow users to download, store and read digital books.

And the always-connected technology opens up a new range of opportunities for authors and publishers to experiment with electronic books, or e-books.

Comparisons are already being made between Kindle and Apple's iPod digital music player. Launched in 2001 at the same $US399 price, the iPod has gone on to radically change the music industry.

The battery-operated Amazon Kindle allows users to download books, newspapers and blogs directly without the need for a computer or a tethered connection.

The device can hold the equivalent of about 200 digital books. But they will have to be downloaded from the Amazon website at the cost of about $US10 for bestsellers and new releases.

Typically, top-selling books on Amazon.com retail for between $US10 and $US20, with delivery costs on top.

"If you're going to do something like this, you have to be as good as the book in a lot of respects," Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos told Newsweek magazine ahead of Monday's launch. "But we also have to look for things that ordinary books can't do."

Weighing 280 grams, the white, tapered device will use a free, high speed wireless broadband technology to connect with the Amazon servers.

The web retailer is making some 90,000 books available on its Kindle Store, including over 100 bestsellers. In most cases, first chapters can be downloaded for free.

Amazon says it will take "less than 60 seconds" to download a full-length book.

Although it is unlikely Kindle will ever see the light of day in Australia, the local book industry has already jumped headlong into the digital age.

Last week, the Dymocks book store chain launched a digital book website stocking about 120,000 ebooks that can be downloaded and read on a computer, mobile phone or other handheld device.

At the launch, Dymocks chief executive Don Grover said he was attempting to take on large online retailers like Amazon but did not see the paper book dying out any time soon.

"Customers love the feel and the smell of a book, and so it's not like music - there's a tactile book in front of you," Mr Grover said. "That [physical books] is still going to be our main business, we believe for a very, very long period of time."

- © Fairfax NZ News