BEIJING, July 11 -- Donald Graham, chief executive officer of Washington Post Co, travels almost every week and says he hardly ever leaves home without his Kindle digital book reader from Amazon Inc.
"I have found it to be a very easy way to read," said Graham, 63, who recently read Steve Coll's The Bin Ladens on the black, white and gray screen and uses the device to access Kindle editions of the company's Newsweek and Slate publications. "I read a lot of books on flights and on downtime. I've got a bad shoulder and it can add a lot of weight to your suitcase."
Graham and television host Martha Stewart, 66, are fans of the 10-ounce device, which receives material over the Sprint Nextel Corp wireless-phone network from Seattle-based Amazon's Kindle store. Books sold via Kindle cost less than paper ones, with New York Times bestsellers priced at $9.99 or less, said Ian Free, an Amazon vice-president.
"I'm totally hooked," Stewart told Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos on a recent show. She said she peruses the Wall Street Journal on her Kindle, takes the reader on vacation and uses it to find recipes when cooking at friends' homes.
By 2010, Amazon may get 3 percent, or $741 million, of revenue from sales of the paperback-sized reader and digital books, according to Citigroup Inc analyst Mark Mahaney, a Kindle user. That's up from this year's 0.3 percent, or $60 million, he said.
The Web retailer cut the price of the Kindle, which Newsweek magazine called the iPod of books, to $359 from $399 in May. Amazon initially sold out of the white, 19.5 by 13.5 cm reader within five and a half hours of its November release, Free said.
Sales of e-books may rise 30 percent annually to $1.3 billion, or 5 percent of US consumer book spending, in 2012, from $340 million, or 1.5 percent of the market, in 2007, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers.
The Kindle and the competing $299.99 Sony Reader will boost growth, which is being fed by digital offerings from publishers such as Bertelsmann AG's Random House and CBS Corp's Simon & Schuster units, Pricewaterhouse said.
(Source: China Daily/Agencies)
