A NEW LEAF FOR BOOKS

Books have been very good to Jeff Bezos. When he sought to make his mark in the nascent days of the Web, he chose to open an online store for books, a decision that led to billionaire status for him, dotcom glory for his company and countless hours wasted by authors checking their Amazon sales ratings.

But as much as Bezos loves books professionally and personally8212;he8217;s a big reader, and his wife is a novelist8212;he also understands that the surge of technology will engulf all media. 8220;Books are the last bastion of analog,8221; he says, in a conference room overlooking the Seattle skyline. We8217;re in the former VA hospital that is the physical headquarters for the world8217;s largest virtual store. 8220;Music and video have been digital for a long time, and short-form reading has been digitized, beginning with the early Web. But long-form reading really hasn8217;t.8221; Yet.

This week Bezos is releasing the Amazon Kindle, an electronic device that he hopes will leapfrog over previous attempts at e-readers and become the turning point in a transformation toward Book 2.0. That8217;s shorthand for a revolution already in progress that will change the way readers read, writers write and publishers publish. The Kindle represents a milestone in a time of transition, when a challenged publishing industry is competing with television, Guitar Hero and time burned on the BlackBerry; literary critics are bemoaning a possible demise of print culture, and Norman Mailer8217;s recent death underlined the dearth of novelists who cast giant shadows. On the other hand, there are vibrant pockets of book lovers on the Internet who are waiting for a chance to refurbish the dusty halls of literacy.

8220;If you8217;re going to do something like this, you have to be as good as the book in a lot of respects,8221; says Bezos. 8220;But we also have to look for things that ordinary books can8217;t do.8221; Bounding to a whiteboard in the conference room, he ticks off a number of attributes that a book-reading device must have.

First, it must project an aura of bookishness Therefore the Kindle named to evoke the crackling ignition of knowledge has the dimensions of a paperback, with a tapering of its width that emulates the bulge toward a book8217;s binding. It weighs but 10.3 ounces, and unlike a laptop computer it does not run hot or make intrusive beeps. A reading device must be sharp and durable, Bezos says, and with the use of E Ink, a breakthrough technology of several years ago that mimes the clarity of a printed book, the Kindle8217;s six-inch screen posts readable pages. The battery has to last for a while, he adds, since there8217;s nothing sadder than a book you can8217;t read because of electile dysfunction. The Kindle gets as many as 30 hours of reading on a charge, and recharges in two hours. And, to soothe the anxieties of print-culture stalwarts, in sleep mode the Kindle displays retro images of ancient texts, early printing presses and beloved authors like Emily Dickinson and Jane Austen.

But then comes the features that your mom8217;s copy of Gone With the Wind can8217;t match. E-book devices like the Kindle allow you to change the font size: aging baby boomers will appreciate that every book can instantly be a large-type edition. The handheld device can also hold several shelves8217; worth of books: 200 of them onboard, hundreds more on a memory card and a limitless amount in virtual library stacks maintained by Amazon. Also, the Kindle allows you to search within the book for a phrase or name.

Some of those features have been available on previous e-book devices, notably the Sony Reader. The Kindle8217;s real breakthrough springs from a feature that its predecessors never offered: wireless connectivity, via a system called Whispernet. It8217;s based on the EVDO broadband service offered by cell-phone carriers, allowing it to work anywhere, not just Wi-Fi hotspots. As a result, says Bezos, 8220;This isn8217;t a device, it8217;s a service.8221;

Specifically, it8217;s an extension of the familiar Amazon store where, of course, Kindles will be sold. Amazon has designed the Kindle to operate totally independent of a computer: you can use it to go to the store, browse for books, check out your personalized recommendations, and read reader reviews and post new ones, tapping out the words on a thumb-friendly keyboard. Buying a book with a Kindle is a one-touch process. And once you buy, the Kindle does its neatest trick: it downloads the book and installs it in your library, ready to be devoured. 8220;The vision is that you should be able to get any book 8212; not just any book in print, but any book that8217;s ever been in print 8212; on this device in less than a minute,8221; says Bezos.

Amazon has worked hard to get publishers to step up efforts to release digital versions of new books and backlists, and more than 88,000 will be on sale at the Kindle store on launch. The Kindle is not just for books. Via the Amazon store, you can subscribe to newspapers The Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Le Monde and magazines The Atlantic. When issues go to press, the virtual publications are automatically beamed into your Kindle.

In addition, the Kindle can venture out on the Web itself 8212; to look up things in Wikipedia, search via Google or follow links from blogs and other Web pages. You can jot down a gloss on the page of the book you8217;re reading, or capture passages with an electronic version of a highlight pen. Though Bezos is reluctant to make the comparison, Amazon believes it has created the iPod of reading.
-STEVEN LEVY Newsweek