Kindle 2 (From The Northern Echo)

Kindle 2

4:45pm Monday 30th March 2009 in

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UNDAUNTED by the fairly low-key reception for its first e-book reader, Amazon last week launched its successor - Kindle 2. This latest version can hold 1,500 books, all of which can be downloaded from Amazon's website in around a minute.

Newspapers and magazines are watching developments closely. In an era when most papers, including The Northern Echo, give away their content on the web for free, in the hope of making money selling adverts, Kindle readers have to sign up for a digital subscription.

Take an official tour of the Kindle 2 from Amazon

The New York Times charges $13.99 a month. The Wall Street Journal and The Times of London ask for $9.99. The revenue is shared between the papers and Amazon because, so far, the downloads carry no advertising.

Interestingly, one of Kindle 2's biggest new features, a text-to-speech option which enables you to listen instead of read, has run into trouble. Within hours of the new book reader going on sale, the Authors Guild in the United States, claimed it violated members' copyright.

"They don't have the right to read a book out loud, " says Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild. "That's an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law."

Amazon reckons the synthetic text-to-voice feature isn't good enough to listen to a full book.

No word on UK sales yet.