Kindle Report Ignites Amazon’s Stock

Shares of online retailer Amazon.com rocketed nearly 10% today on speculation that 2008 sales of its Kindle electronic book reader will be twice as high as originally expected. Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney projected in a research report that sales of Kindle will reach about 380,000 units this year and could generate more than $1 billion for Amazon by 2010. "Turns out the Kindle is becoming the iPod of the book world," Mahaney wrote.

Launched in 2007, Kindle offers readers more than 4,500 science fiction titles, including classics such as Stowaway to Mars, by John Wyndham (1936), Rebels of the Red Planet, by Charles L. Fontenay (1961), and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, by Philip K. Dick (1965), as well as more recent works such as Semper Mars, by Ian Douglas (1998), Starstrike: Task Force Mars, by Douglas Niles (2007), and In the Courts of the Crimson Kings, by S. M. Stirling (2008).

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is founder of Blue Origin, a privately-funded aerospace company which might actually transport a reader to Mars some day.