Interesting discussion. I'm one of those older retired people who love to read. My wife, who is disabled with Parkinson's, is also an avid reader of sci fi. I've mentioned in other posts the advantages for her that the Kindle brings to someone who has trouble holding a book and turning pages. She loves her Kindle.
I just bought another one for myself. Physically limited she may be but just try to separate her from her Kindle!
My reading habits have been forced to adapt to my current job as her caregiver so I can only read between household chores, usually a few paragraphs at a time. The Kindle will be great for this and also for those waits in doctor's offices.
I see Amazon's core business as selling books, not Kindles. The Kindle is a way to generate book sales and to keep most of those sales in house. Yes. I do download from other sources, such as Baen and The Gutenberg Project, but most of my purchases are from Amazon.
We certainly don't make $100,000 per year but books are a priority with us so we make do. We probably buy more books now (Damn Whispernet!
) but save some $$ due to the generally lower prices compared to pbooks.
I think BKeeper's observations regarding Bezos' motivations are right on target. I like to watch the promo of the Charlie Rose interview of Bezos on the Amazon Kindle site- I'm a sucker for a CEO who is passionate about his company and its relevance to our culture.