Amazon’s e-book reader sells, but not like the printed page

NEW YORK -- More than four months after Amazon.com released the Kindle, no one is sure whether the latest e-book reader is really hot -- or not. But publishers believe that the Kindle has helped, if not revolutionized, the tiny electronic market.

Amazon.com has received extensive media coverage since unveiling the Kindle on the Monday before Thanksgiving and announcing that the first run had sold out within a few hours. Amazon.com has declined to give sales figures for the Kindle -- at least 2,000, judging from the number of customer reviews -- but has said repeatedly that supply is not keeping up with demand, with the device often out of stock.

Publishing officials are reluctant to discuss sales figures but say that they have seen double digit increases in e-book sales since the Kindle’s release, including renewed interest in downloads on the Sony Reader. Sales for the most popular books are in the hundreds, comparable to the number for the Sony, which came out in 2006.

“The Kindle has increased awareness. Publishers have told me that in some cases the Sony numbers were double or triple to what they had been,” says Michael Smith, head of the International Digital Publishing Forum, which tracks e-book sales.

Selling through Amazon.com for $399, Kindle is thinner than most paperbacks and weighs 10.3 ounces. It can hold some 200 books, along with newspapers, magazines and an entire dictionary.

The Kindle has been praised for its selection, more than 100,000 books, blogs and newspapers, and for the speed of delivery, less than a minute. Fans include such authors as Toni Morrison, Michael Lewis and Neil Gaiman.

New technologies, from the compact disc to the DVD, are usually more convenient and more effective than the ones they replace. But no e-book device has approached the practical and aesthetic appeal of the traditional book.

“Books themselves are very efficient machines, and the experience of holding a book is part of the book culture,” says Farrar, Straus & Giroux publisher Jonathan Galassi, who called the Kindle “flimsy” and said it reminded him of an Etch-a-Sketch toy.

“E-books are a growing niche for now,” Smith says, “but I certainly don’t see a time when everybody will be reading them. People just love what the traditional book represents to them.”

E-books undeniably are growing. According to the International Digital Publishing Forum, sales have risen steadily over the last six years, from around $6 million in 2002 to around $33 million in 2007 -- but that’s still less than 1% of the publishing business.