TORRANCE: The carry-on library

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By Kelly Jane Torrance

We've all done it. Rushing to get clothes, kids and currency properly packed, we arrive at the airport ready to relax and realize we've forgotten a book for that four-hour flight. Or we remember but finish it by the time we land and have nothing left to focus on but our fellow sunbathers as we sprawl out on the beach. So we stop at the airport bookstore and, all too often, are stuck choosing between the latest Stephen King and the last few Jodi Picoults.

Could Amazon's Kindle change all that?

The debate over electronic books, or e-books, has raged since the digital age began. Some predict that books will be obsolete one day, and the rapidly decreasing numbers of people who actually read their newspapers on newsprint back them up. Others insist that the perfect simplicity of books can't be bettered.

That latter group long seemed to be right. No e-book readers really caught on, and programs that let you read books on cell phones or PDAs were barely used.

The company that changed the way we bought books now wants to change the way we read them, though. Amazon.com introduced Kindle last November; the first batch sold out in less than six hours despite a price tag of $399. (This month, the price dropped to $359.) What is it about this device that caught readers' attention when so many other e-readers have failed?

One word: wireless.

Unlike other e-readers, the Kindle enables users to download a title from anywhere, anytime. You can think of a book and, if it's available, start reading it in less than a minute.

"Our CEO, Jeff Bezos, said that the vision for Kindle is to be able to get every book ever printed in less than 60 seconds," says Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener. "That's a grand vision; we've got a long ways to go."

The Kindle store started with 90,000 books, including 112 recent best-sellers. With thousands added just this month, there are 125,000. (Borders, for comparison's sake, averages 87,000 titles per store.) Most new releases are $9.99, while classics are practically free. That's in addition to newspapers, including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and magazines, including Time and the Atlantic.

Mr. Herdener says the company has found that it's not so much gadget geeks who are buying its product, as you might expect, but voracious readers. Josh Bancroft is both. He's a social-media expert for Intel Software Network in Beaverton, Ore., who reads about 100 books a year and says, "It drives me crazy to have a few minutes go by without something for me to read."