portable, wireless electronic reading device produced by the American e-commerce company Amazon.com.

The Kindle was first released by Amazon.com in 2007 as a new way to read books, magazines, newspapers, and other written material. The Kindle uses a display technology called electronic paper, which produces a sharp screen image that resembles text printed on paper. Roughly the size and weight of a trade paperback book, the original Kindle could store more than 200 books and could be loaded with new material from Amazon.com through a free wireless connection, though only in the United States. The Kindle was also equipped with a limited World Wide Web browser that let American users access the Internet.

The Kindle was not the first electronic book reader; other companies, including the Japanese Sony Corporation, have produced and marketed their own readers. What made the Kindle different was having the marketing power of Amazon.com to distribute titles. A vast selection of electronic books, as well as many newspapers, magazines, and blogs (blog), are available for the Kindle. The device's wireless capability enables users to buy and read material anytime. The introduction of the Kindle was met with some skepticism, with doubts raised over who would pay the relatively high cost for the unit—priced at $399 for its initial release—even though titles for the Kindle generally cost less than printed works. Nevertheless, Amazon.com sold out its entire inventory of the devices as soon as the product went on sale, requiring numerous customers to wait for months on back orders.

New electronic books, or e-books, are typically priced at $9.99, and more than 200,000 titles are available. Many newspapers are also available for downloading, which can be automated, including The New York Times (New York Times, The), The Washington Post (Washington Post, The), The Wall Street Journal (Wall Street Journal, The), Le Monde (Monde, Le), Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and The Irish Times; magazines include Time, The Atlantic Monthly (Atlantic Monthly, The), and Forbes.