Amazon fires up Kindle sequel

Image courtesy of E-Commerce Times

King was on stage at New York's Morgan Library on Monday when Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos turned the page on Kindle 2, the newest version of its electronic book reader that in 2008 gained the endorsement of Oprah Winfrey and presented company executives with a happy problem in a deteriorating economy: It couldn't keep enough of them in stock.

"Kindle 2 is everything customers tell us they love about the original Kindle, only thinner, faster, crisper, with longer battery life, and capable of holding hundreds more books," Bezos said in a company press statement. "If you want, Kindle 2 will even read to you - something new we added that a book could never do."

Bezos is referring to the Kindle 2's Read-to-Me feature; a male or female voice can instantly turn whatever text you're reading into an audio book. Later this month, that voice in your Kindle will try to scare the pants off of you with King's new exclusive-to-Amazon novella "Ur", which features a jilted professor buying one of the e-readers that "unlocks a literary world that even the most avid of book lovers could never imagine. But once the door is open, there are those things that one hopes we'll never read or live through," according to the press statement.

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