Amazon's been pretty cagey with Kindle sales numbers, except to say that it sold out the first batch in 5.5 hours and that more are finally arriving. Still, you can't keep a secret forever, and TechCrunch says they have it on good authority that Bezos and Co. have sold some 240,000 Kindles since November. Adding it all up, that's good enough for $100M in total revenue so far -- which is about what Wall Street's been predicting. Of course, that's chump change compared to the $1B annual business some analysts think Kindle can be, but you gotta start somewhere -- and a quarter-mil out the gate in the first year ain't bad at all.

Take this one with plenty of salt, but CrunchGear has it that not one, not three, but exactly two new Kindle models are destined to go on sale to the adoring indifferent public within the next 6 to 12 months. Reportedly, the first model is simply a revamped version of the existing Kindle with a smaller form factor, the same sized screen and an "improved interface." The second new version will purportedly be shaped like a 8.5- x 11-inch sheet of paper and should land early next year. Both Kindles will be available in a variety of hues, though pricing information remains a mystery. Hang tight bookworms, we've still got awhile yet before figuring out just how legitimate this is.

[Via The Boy Genius Report]

At All Things D today Mossberg and Amazon's Jeff Bezos had a little discussion about digital media, which had a couple of decent nuggets. Check it out:

• On Kindle 2: "There will be a second version, a third version, a tenth version. ... but a second version is not that near."
• According to Bezos, on a title-by-title basis of the 125,000 titles available both in print and on Kindle, Kindle's sales represent 6% of total sales. We have no idea how significant that actually is (or what that means in dollars), but Bezos seemed to be fairly impressed with that number. Still, "Books won't go away just as horses won't go away -- they're still around."
• Talking about whether the Kindle was built to work on non-CDMA networks (read: networks other than Sprint). Bezo said: "we're gonna -- we need to be thinking globally about the device, which we are." He almost slipped there and said "We're gonna launch internationally," but caught himself.
• Bezos also announced a new, for-pay, streaming video-on-demand service for Amazon, which will be released in the next couple of weeks. The video should start playing "instantly," but we don't have any further details (like number of titles, library, price, etc.).

$399? Ha. Amazon just cut the price of its Kindle e-book reader to $359 and zero cents with free 2-day shipping. Now giddy up, son, there's no cake for you here.

[Thanks, Chris G.]

Get 'em while they're hot. Amazon has its Kindle e-book reader back on sale, finally following up on that 5.5 hours of stock available the first time around. Of course, that $399 pricetag isn't budging, so if you were looking for a cheaper way to get into this racket, you'll have to look elsewhere. Or just squint really hard and pretend those two nines are zeros.

[Via GizmoScene]

The AP has a story out on the Amazon Kindle's impact on the teensy tiny e-book market. It hasn't been insubstantial, with some reporting double digit increases in e-book sales since the Kindle's release, and it hasn't hurt the competition either -- Sony numbers were apparently doubled or tripled from what they were before the Kindle arrived. Opinions are still torn as to whether the Kindle is really the right device for the job, but the press buzz around the device has certainly impacted the struggling e-book market, which is hovering around $33 million of the $35 billion publishing business. Some analysts are fairly certain e-books will remain a small niche, similar to audiobooks, but we think everybody's missing the big picture here: direct-to-brain downloads. Get on it, people.

Sure, Philippe Starck may not care for the Kindle, but an open letter posted on Amazon's front page suggests he's in the minority. We already knew that the company was having a difficult time filling orders, but we had no idea the wait for buyers would warrant what amounts to a public apology from Jeff Bezos. Apparently, the online superstore is drawing heat for six-week delays on delivery for some customers, and is scrambling to get itself into an "order today, ship today" scheme. The original release of the device sold out in just 5 1/2 hours says the letter, which might explain why no one is hacking it -- no one has it.

[Thanks, Michael]

Sure, it might not be as filling as the Skoda cakemobile, or as family oriented as Martha Stewart's Wii cake, but do those contain the thrilling tale of The Light Beam Rider? Yeah, we thought not.

Paul: "Unfortunately the screen refresh times of '30-35 minutes at 350 degrees' is just plain unacceptable."
Chris: "Moments later, a naked Jeff Bezos burst out, ready to greet everyone at the shareholders' meeting."
Richard: "Philippe Starck calls the Kindle 'a little delicious.' "
Sean: "No friends, that's not the iCing phone, tis the Kindle Cake and it serves 12."
Don: "You can never be too careful buying gadgets on eBay."
Josh: "The Light-Beam Rider was surprisingly short."
Ross: "The book is a lie."

[Via The Raw Feed]

You know, the Kindle runs Linux, has USB, uses all standard processors and chipsets, even comes with free built-in EV-DO -- you'd kind of think that stuff (and all the rest) would make it about as high a profile target for hardware modders and hackers as there are. So what gives, why hasn't the hacker community glommed onto this thing? Hit the poll: anyone can answer, but we really want to hear from the über-geeks in the house why the call to Kindle has gone unheeded.

Update: Good news! Reader Thomas did us a solid with some obscure links on how to get hardware access to the Kindle's console (some soldering req'd), where you can muck around with the bootloader. Also found: the complete and impressively extensive list of keyboard shortcuts. Now, let's parlay this stuff into something useful, shall we? And by "we" we mean, "you", since we're merely editors of a gadget site.

It's likely that the Kindle's popularity is going to spawn a whole slew of e-books vying for the eyes of readers. A concept from a student named Nedzad Mujcinovic at Monash University could very well stoke the fires of competition if his Livre ever makes it to store shelves. The system uses an e-ink screen overlaid with a touch surface, thus forgoing the multitudinous buttons of the Kindle for an ultra-simple, gesture-based input scheme. Pages can be turned by sliding your finger from corner to corner, though double- and triple-finger gestures will advance the book by ten and 50 pages, respectively. Most notable for real book fans is the inclusion of a leather stitched cover, meant to evoke the look and feel of the device's analog counterpart. Amazon's designers would be wise to, uh... take a page from Nedzad's book for the Kindle 2.

[Thanks, Nick B.]

While executives can blow-hard the success of their goods 'til blue in the face, one of the best measurements of market acceptance is the appearance of the third party accessory. Here's the first we've seen: Kindle Cases from WaterField. Starting February 12th you'll have your choice of a $27 slip case, $39 sleeve case, and $49 travel case offering varying degrees of protection unmatched by any dust jacket. Then again, a book doesn't require much protection does it?

Truth be told, only a portion of the world was totally shocked when FCC documentation gave us all reason to believe that Amazon was indeed diving head first into the hardware biz, but even now, it still seems a touch awkward to see a label most commonly spotted on corrugated boxes plastered on an e-book reader. Nevertheless, Bezos' baby did indeed take on the aforementioned sector, though it took an outlandishly long time to go from FCC-approved to bookworm-ready. After missing a gazillion (give or take a few) proposed due dates, the cleverly-named (and questionably designed) Kindle finally made itself available on -- gasp! -- Amazon.com some 14 months after its original coming out party.

As with most highly-anticipated devices, this particular one was also met with its fair share of critics and proponents, but judging by the initial difficulty it had remaining in stock, it seemed well on its way to e-reader stardom. Granted, we've no clairvoyant on staff, but we're guessing a few of those orders went to a few of you all. Assuming that's the case, why not give ole Jeff and company something to think about for Kindle v2.0? Yeah, we know you've been enjoying those unannounced easter eggs and whatnot, but now that you've had ample time to flip through a few paperless pages and really get a read (ahem) on this thing, what alterations would you make going forward? How's about a color screen, for starters? Maybe a little more responsiveness? A little less '80, a little more '08 in the design? Or, say, native Engadget support in the RSS reader? We're only partially kidding on that last one, but feel free to agree and tack on a dozen more worthwhile changes in comments below.

Jobs to NYT on Kindle: "It doesn't matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don't read anymore. Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don't read anymore." Yes, it's true, the only books Steve thinks we need are MacBooks.

Irony: You're reading right now.

Further irony: You're probably not reading Engadget on a Kindle (at least not through its regular RSS reader).

Is this like geeky Koan or something? Does this mean Engadget doesn't exist? Either way, we get his point. It's a damn shame fewer people aren't reading real books.