Amazon CEO Bezos: Printed books are for Kindling

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Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos is so excited about the e-commerce giant’s Kindle, an electronic book reader, that he comes off a bit scary. Speaking at the Dow Jones All Things D conference today in Carlsbad, Bezos predicted that the ‘vast majority’ of books in the future would be read on electronic screens. Physical books, he added not very kindly, ‘won’t go away -- just as horses haven’t gone away.’

Sony CEO Howard Stringer, speaking from the same stage later, defended not the 500-year-old printing process but the animals: ‘Here we are in a global oil crisis,’ Stringer deadpanned, ‘and he’s knocking the horse.’

Bezos declined to say how many Kindles, whose price was cut by $40 to $359 on Tuesday, have been sold. But he did let drop one fairly impressive statistic: Of the 125,000 titles, including 100 bestsellers, that are available on Amazon in digital and print formats, more than 6% are now sold electronically.

Bezos seemed less certain about the ultimate routes into the home for music and video. The record labels are helping make Amazon, which is selling unrestricted MP3 songs, into a more serious competitor to Apple‘s iTunes. The company also is selling movie downloads through its Unbox service.

But Bezos announced that Amazon would be hedging its bets on the delivery method consumers want. In a few weeks, the company plans to start charging for streams of video that start playing immediately and have no commercials.

‘I don’t know if it’s the right way to go,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Most markets are not winner-take-all.’

-- Joseph Menn