Amazon Set to Release Kindle 2

Live from Kindle-fest II

Kindle 2 is pretty much as advertised and leaked. Thinner ("pencil thin"--a third of an inch); a new five-way controller to improve navigation, which particularly helps for newspaper reading; improved placement of the page-turning buttons; a new E ink display with 16 shades of gray (just like Sony already has); 20 percent faster page turn; 25% longer battery life; seven times more storage (though who knows why); USB-charge capability and a more portable charger; and yes, still apparently designed by Jeff Bezos's brother-in-law in his spare time and priced at $359 and shipping on February 24. (Current Kindle owners get "prioritized in the queue" if they order right now.)

The new Whispersync lets you switch among multiple Kindles and other devices without losing your place, and "experimental" text-to-speech feature lets Kindle read aloud to you in a computerized voice at any time without losing your place in the work.

In other words, no epub support and no radically-new features or changes--an incremental update of the first Kindle. And no new statistics on sales, and no announcement (for now) on their suspected iPhone app.

But they do have Stephen King, just as the WSJ forecast this morning, who wrote a story--"Ur"--that features a Kindle in it. The story will be a Kindle exclusive (at least for now), though it's currently available only for pre-order. It releases the same day as the new Kindle, selling for $2.99 (amusingly discounted from a "digital list price of $3.99"). S&S ceo Carolyn Reidy says there is no current agreement to release the book in traditional print, though she is hopeful that they will be able to make it available that way at some point.

"I'm the entertainment," King said as he took the state. At first he turned Amazon's invitation down, he said, even though he was a satisfied Kindle customer since a year ago December. But then a scene came to him. "I thought I had a chance to say something about reading on the computer" and the supposed crisis in reading.

As King left the stage, he assured, "You're going to like this gadget but you're going to like books, too. It isn't like these things are in conflict."

In other Tools of Change-timed announcements, oversized ereader-in-development Plastic Logic has announced a number of content provider partnerships even though the device is now not expected to hit the market until early 2010. Ingram Digital will serve books to the new device; LibreDigital will provide newspapers and magazines, and Zinio will serve magazines, too. And they have partnered with Fictionwise to run the econtent store.

The company says that "concurrent with the release of its electronic reader, it will launch a content store where users can download a rich variety of business and leisure digital content from newspapers, magazines, trade journals, blogs, ebooks, etc."