Jeff Bezos on the Future of Amazon.com

Smartmoney.com talks to Jeff Bezos on the future of Amazon.com and touches on the future of the Kindle.

You can find the full chat on the future of Amazon the future of Amazon here, otherwise here is the segment of the interview which discusses the Kindle.

SM: Funny. Today’s technology is such that we will soon have a cheaper, better version of Kindle. When will that happen, and what features can we expect?

Bezos: We will have new versions and new prices, but no date is set. We will continue to put content on. We want to make every book ever written available.

SM: What new features might we expect from the Kindle? Color? Animation? When I tried to read the newspaper on my Kindle, I couldn’t easily jump to the business section.

Bezos: Color or animation isn’t likely. E Ink [the type of technology Kindle employs] display doesn’t support color in a commercial way. Plus, the rapid screen updates required for animation create eyestrain. The Kindle is more like a printed page — easier on your eyes. We will do on-air updates. Perhaps we’ll create better user interface to improve what you’re talking about for a newspaper.

SM: You are creating some original content to sell over the Kindle. There’s a speech by author Mitch Albom, for example. Publishers — your suppliers — won’t like that.

Bezos: We are working with publishers to make their books available on Kindle. We are not buying copyrights from them. We’re also making self-publishing easier and supporting a lot of small publishers.

SM: Perhaps the larger issue is that adults are reading less than they did 10 years ago, according to the National Endowment for the Arts. Isn’t this a concern?

Bezos: We humans evolve with our tools—they change us. But our network-connected tools have not kept pace with everything we need. The tools we’ve been building the past couple of decades make information snacking more convenient—I like my BlackBerry; it’s good for e-mail and chunks of text. But you don’t want to read a 300-page novel from a laptop.It’s not comfortable.The Kindle was built for long-form reading.

SM: So as the Internet shortens our attention span, you think the Kindle will lengthen it?

Bezos: Yes, I think people will read more, not less.

[ Smart Money ]

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