Kindle’s Spark is Out Until February

Amazon's Kindle electronic reader may (or may not!) be a book-lover's dream...but now it's sold out until February.

Amazon’s Kindle electronic reader may—or may not!—set afire the hearts of book lovers everywhere…but following a gushing endorsement in late October from none other than Oprah Winfrey—who named it her “favorite new gadget“—the Kindle’s spark has gone out until at least February. According to Amazon.com, the Kindle will be out of stock for 11 to 13 weeks, so gift-givers looking to set hands on the device in time for the holidays may have no choice but to brave second-hand sellers or risk getting gouged on eBay.

Amazon has so far declined to provide specific sales figures for the Kindle, only indicating that the product’s performance has exceeded the company’s expectations. The product shortage just before the lucrative holiday season has, of course, re-ignited speculation that Amazon is preparing a new “Kindle 2.0,” possibly with a larger screen and features targeting the textbook market. Amazon has repeatedly asserted no new Kindle models will be introduced in 2008.

The Kindle offers an 800 by 600-pixel grayscale E-Ink display, and can download content via Sprint’s EV-DO mobile network. In addition to almost 200,000 titles available from Amazon, users can subscribe to daily publications and have them auto-delivered to the device—and the Kindle can also track RSS feeds to track favorite blogs and other online information sources. The Kindle does not require a monthly subscription.