Seattle (WA) - Amazon has been on the move with its downloadable music and movies recently, and now it's taking more steps with its e-book department.

According to Business Week, Amazon will begin selling its own brand of e-book reader.  Amazon's "Kindle" will be able to "play back" downloaded books, and with a built-in Wi-Fi connection users will even have the ability to download books directly from the device.

"E-books" have been offered by specialty online outlets for a while, so it is certainly nothing new.

Amazon itself owns an e-book store, Mobipocket.  However, it does nothing to integrate the hundreds of e-books licensed by Mobipocket with the existing infrastructure at Amazon.com.

Sony has a similar strategy with its own brand of e-book reader, and its own e-book store.  Sony offers around 18,000 digital books, along with a $300 e-book reader.  Business Week reports that Amazon's Kindle device would probably be priced below that.  Amazon also has the leg up on content, with Mobipocket's access to over 40,000 book titles.

Save paper and backs

Sep 10, 2007 09:50     

If ebook readers come down in price, they would be more available to everyone. With the use of ebook readers, the use of paper would be reduced. The person using an ebook would carry less (in weight) but carry more (in number of e-books). The ebook filled with text ebooks would reduce the weight of backpacks of students [the carrying of heavy backpacks is affecting the backs and other parts of students]).

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Going Green with eBooks

Sep 26, 2007 12:22     

With ebooks, there is no use of paper. Not using paper saves trees. Saving trees helps the enviroment. Saving the enviroment helps everyone now and in the future. One could possibly use the OLPC - http://www.laptop.org going on sale on 11-12-2007 -as an inexpensive ebook viewer. One helps those in third world countries and the one using it here. The OLPC price is about $400.00 (it buys two OLPC; one for the buyer and one to go a third world). [Saving trees, a renewable resources, versus burning coal to power our computers and monitors, a finite resource. If we really wanted to move in the right direction we should legalize hemp. Hemp provides 7x the amount of "paper pulp" per acre that wood does, and it's a weed and grows in places trees won't. -Rick]

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