Amazon's Bezos Gets 'Grumpy' Reading Non-Kindle Books

Amazon.com's Kindle has met expectations and the company picked the right business model to launch the product, CEO Jeff Bezos told a crowd at a Disruptive By Design conference in New York Monday. "My opinion, and so far the market has responded to our approach, is very simple," he said. "Instead of driving the cogitative complexity of a two-year commitment, tell people, 'This is the actual cost of the device,' " Bezos said, according to The New York Times. There's been much debate about the Kindle's business model, much of it centered around Amazon's decision to charge a high price for the device, but a price considered by many to be reasonable. As the newspaper points out, Apple makes its money from the iPod while almost breaking even on the content.

On the other hand, cell phone companies subsidize the sale of phones but profit from monthly service charges. Bezos told the crowd he did consider a cell phone-like model for the Kindle, but he felt Amazon's decision offered a simpler choice for customers.

Meanwhile, Bezos noted that he'd like to have Kindle content available on other devices, and other content available on the Kindle. In effect, the hardware and content businesses would develop separately, he said.

"The device team has the job of making the most remarkable purpose-built reading device in the world," he said, according to the Times. "We are going to give the device team competition. We will make Kindle books, at the same $9.99 price points, available on the iPhone, and other mobile devices and other computing devices."

Bezos is so confident in the future of the Kindle, he noted that "the great 500-year run for books" is over, according to The Wall Street Journal. "It's an unbelievably successful technology. But it's time to change," he said, according to the Times.

Bezos added that he gets "grumpy" when he now has to read a physical book, according to the Journal. "I didn't understand all of the failings of a physical book, because I'm inured to them. But you can't turn the page with one hand. The book is always flopping itself shut at the wrong moment. They're heavy," Bezos said.

Also at the conference, Bezos said he has "strong opinions" regarding Google's deal with book publishers, but he declined to elaborate on those opinions, according to the Journal.

"[It] needs to be revisited ... It doesn't seem right that you should do something -- kind of get a prize for violating a large series of copyrights. You just can't believe that's the way it actually works," he said, according to the Journal.

Kindle sales now represent 35 percent of Amazon's sales of books available in both traditional and electronic formats, Bezos said. "Internally, we are startled and astonished by that statistic," Mr. Bezos said, according to the Journal.