Kindle 2 ships

http://www.teleread.org/

Amazon announced this afternoon that it has started fulfilling orders for its Kindle 2 e-book reader, one day earlier than anticipated. In the two weeks since February 9th’s announcement, the device has already become the number-one selling electronic device at Amazon.

At .036 inches, the new e-reader is thinner than a pencil. Among other improvements over the discontinued 14-month-old Kindle 1, the device-side buttons for turning pages now press inward instead of outward, minimizing inadvertent page turns.

While many had speculated that the $359 price would hinder sales, that doesn’t appear to have occurred. Indeed, the biggest contretemps involving the Kindle 2 has centered around its Nuance-provided text-to-speech voices (Tom and Samantha) and whether authors ought to be compensated when machines read the text aloud.