Amazon’s "Kindle" Kindles the Ebook Flame

Some say that Amazon’s new e-reader, the Kindle, will do to the book industry what the ipod has done to the music industry.
 
There are currently over 125,000 ebooks available for download to Kindle, with more books added daily. Light and compact, easy reading on a screen that closely resembling a paper page, convenient bookmarks that power up the kindle to the same page you were on last, and instant downloads out of the box are some of the features the Kindle boasts. It uses advanced cell phone technology to connect to the bookstore and Wikipedia from anywhere. No more lugging around piles of books, just don’t lose it! Retail value for the kindle right now is around $350, with each book download $9.99.
 
Amazon has definitely created a buzz about the Kindle, and it is concerning some traditional book sellers. Will books eventually become a thing of the past? They probably will never fully go away, but new ideas and technologies are often not accepted, especially when books have not dramatically changed for hundreds of years. The full impact of the Kindle upon books and their readers can only be guessed at. Considering the ease of which we can publish information on the internet today, we all may be reading each others books tomorrow on our own Kindle. In another few hundred years, we probably will plug in Matrix style to read books in a few seconds.

So far, according to Amazon, the Kindle has taken about 6% of the market of traditional book sales, and increasing.