Amazon CEO to Shareholders: Kindle Must Disappear To Be Successful

It appears we scooped the Amazon CEO with our post yesterday that that Kindle book reader is back in stock at Amazon. This morning CEO Bezos has taken over the Amazon home page with the news about the ready-to-ship quantities of the Kindle. He has also prepared a letter to shareholders regarding the Kindle and its instant success with it selling out in 5 hours of launch. So far I can’t find how many Kindle’s they have sold. Over 2,000 Kindle users have reviewed the device so we know they produced at least that many.

A couple snips from the letter:

We knew Kindle would have to get out of the way, just like a physical book, so readers could become engrossed in the words and forget they’re reading on a device. We also knew we shouldn’t try to copy every last feature of a book—we could never out-book the book. We’d have to add new capabilities—ones that could never be possible with a traditional book.

At the beginning of our design process, we identified what we believe is the book’s most important feature. It disappears. When you read a book, you don’t notice the paper and the ink and the glue and the stitching. All of that dissolves, and what remains is the author’s world.

As I’ve noted, this year will be the test for the Kindle. The early adopters have theirs and now the difficult part begins – getting the average book reader to change something they have been doing all their lives.

I also wonder whether the masses will want to pay for an electronic book when they it’s clear that they won’t pay for content or music. Could Bezos usher in a new time when people will pay for content no matter how it’s consumed?