Revolutionary Electronic-Paper

* Revolutionary electronic-paper display provides a sharp, high-resolution screen that looks and reads like real paper.
* Simple to use: no computer, no cables, no syncing.
* Wireless connectivity enables you to shop the Kindle Store directly from your Kindle.
* Buy a book and it is auto-delivered wirelessly in less than one minute.
* More than 125,000 books available, including more than 98 of 112 current New York Times Best Sellers.
* New York Times Best Sellers and New Releases $9.99, unless marked otherwise.
* Free book samples. Download and read first chapters for free before you decide to buy.
* Top U.S. newspapers including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post; top magazines including TIME, Atlantic Monthly, and Forbes—all auto-delivered wirelessly.
* Top international newspapers from France, Germany, and Ireland; Le Monde, Frankfurter Allgemeine, and The Irish Times—all auto-delivered wirelessly.
* More than 300 top blogs from the worlds of business, technology, sports, entertainment, and politics, including BoingBoing, Slashdot, TechCrunch, ESPN's Bill Simmons, The Onion, Michelle Malkin, and The Huffington Post—all updated wirelessly throughout the day.
* Lighter and thinner than a typical paperback; weighs only 10.3 ounces.
* Holds over 200 titles.
* Long battery life. Leave wireless on and recharge approximately every other day. Turn wireless off and read for a week or more before recharging. Fully recharges in 2 hours.
* Unlike WiFi, Kindle utilizes the same high-speed data network (EVDO) as advanced cell phones—so you never have to locate a hotspot.
* No monthly wireless bills, service plans, or commitments—we take care of the wireless delivery so you can simply click, buy, and read.
* Includes free wireless access to the planet's most exhaustive and up-to-date encyclopedia—Wikipedia.org.
* Email your Word documents and pictures (.JPG, .GIF, .BMP, .PNG) to Kindle for easy on-the-go viewing.
* Included in the box: Kindle wireless reader, Book cover, Power adapter, USB 2.0 cable

ABOUT

That topic both energized and unnerved people attending BookExpo America, the publishing and bookselling industry’s annual trade show, which ended at the convention center here.

Much of the talk was focused on the Kindle, Amazon’s electronic reader, which has gained widespread acclaim for its ease of use. Jeffrey P. Bezos, the founder, spent much of a packed session evangelizing about the Kindle, which he said already accounts for 6 percent of his company’s unit sales of books that are available in both paper and electronic formats.

But excitement about the Kindle, which was introduced in November, also worries some publishing executives, who fear Amazon’s still-growing power as a bookseller. Those executives note that Amazon currently sells most of its Kindle books to customers for a price well below what it pays publishers, and they anticipate that it will not be long before Amazon begins using the Kindle’s popularity as a lever to demand that publishers cut prices.

Overall, traffic at the book fair seemed lower than in past years, a reflecting perhaps that some editors did not make the long trip west from Manhattan, as well as the fact that the growth in the book business has slowed.

While authors including William Shatner, Andre Dubus III and Ty Pennington drew big crowds of booksellers seeking autographs, several books by little-known authors scheduled for publication were being pushed hard by publishers. Those include two that use witches, of a sort, as their protagonists and one whose author is in shaman training.

One, “The Heretic’s Daughter,” is a novel about Martha Carrier, the first woman to be accused, tried and hanged as a witch in Salem, Mass. The author, Kathleen Kent, is a 10th-generation descendant of Carrier (though not a witch herself, said Reagan Arthur, an editor at the book’s publisher, Little, Brown). Another, “The Lace Reader,” by Brunonia Barry, is set in modern-day Salem, where the narrator hails from a family of women who can read the future in a pattern of lace. The novel, being published by William Morrow in July, was previously self-published by the author.

Kira Salak, the author of the third novel, “The White Mary,” draws on her travels across Papua New Guinea for an account of a journalist searching for a missing reporter who is thought to have committed suicide but might still be alive. According to Sarah Knight, an editor at Henry Holt, the author has undergone shaman training in Peru.

Booksellers, who make up the other major group attending the publishing convention, are also concerned that electronic books could become more than a passing fancy for an electronically savvy subset of customers. “It certainly does feel like a threat,” said Charles Stillwagon, the events manager at the Tattered Cover Book Store, a large independent bookseller in Denver.

Nearly all publishers say their sales of electronic books are growing exponentially. Carolyn K. Reidy, the chief executive of Simon & Schuster, said its sales of electronic books will more than double this year compared to last year, after growing 40 percent in 2007 from 2006. David Shanks, the chief executive of Penguin Group USA, said his company sold more electronic books in the first four months of 2008 than in all of last year.

The numbers are still small, which helps to account for the rapid growth. Ms. Reidy said that electronic book sales last year totaled about $1 million, a sliver of its annual sales of roughly $1 billion. During the convention, Simon & Schuster said it would convert an additional 5,000 titles to electronic format this year, more than doubling its number of electronic books and making available many of the best-selling books on the company’s backlist of consistent sellers.

Electronic books have been available since 1968 and have gained broader attention at least since 2000, when Stephen King sold 600,000 copies of “Riding the Bullet,” an electronic-only thriller, in two days. Now, however, “we’re finally at the tipping point,” Ms. Reidy said.

Much of the expected growth in electronic books can be tied to the Kindle. When Amazon introduced the product, it sold out of the machines on the first day. The company needed months to adjust its manufacturing capacity and supply chain to be able to keep Kindles in stock, which Mr. Bezos said it has now accomplished.