"It's meant for people to read. It's light, it feels good in your hands. You don't notice it's there. It doesn't beep at you, it doesn't get warm in your hands," he told reporters.
Amazon is also working on another segment of the consumer market: college students.
On Wednesday it announced partnerships with textbook publishers Cengage Learning, Pearson and Wiley to put some of their titles on the Kindle Store. Those companies represent 60% of the U.S. higher-education textbook market.
Some universities, including Case Western Reserve University and Princeton University, are launching trial programs to make the Kindle DX available to students this fall.
"E-readers will ultimately become ubiquitous," predicted Roger Fidler, program director for digital publishing at the Reynolds Journalism Institute.
They provide readers with a print-like reading experience in a more environmentally friendly and convenient way, he said. In five years, people will have multiple e-readers in their homes where they can read newspapers and access other information including medical records, he said.
"Can it save newspapers? The jury's still out on that," he said. "But it does offer newspapers an opportunity for a new revenue stream the Web has not offered."
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alana.semuels@latimes.com
