Amazon’s E-Book Service

(New York Times) I don’t mean to turn this column into All E-Books, All the Time. But Amazon pulled a nice one-two P.R. punch. Two weeks ago, it released its Kindle 2 electronic book reader, and announced that its catalog of electronic books had hit 240,000 titles. You can download them wirelessly to the Kindle, via the Sprint cellular network, whenever it suits your fancy. And then yesterday, Amazon announced that you can buy and read all these books on an iPhone or an iPod Touch—without even owning a Kindle. Clever. What makes the Kindle successful is the effortlessness of it. One-click book buying. Forty-five-second book downloading. One-click book reading. Amazon tore down every last barrier, minimizing the number of steps at every turn. The convenience is amazing… Read more..