Amazon’s new Kindles

They look better, are way cheaper, and, well, let’s just say that Amazon puts themselves in a very good position with these increasingly impressive portable media stores. From Tim Carmody:

The advantage traditional paper-based media has always had over electronic media is that the consumer doesn’t have to bear the cost of the technology up front. If you buy a book or a magazine, the technology that enables its production and transmission is already built in.

The cost of the device can turn an electronic media gadget into a prestige device, like Apple’s iPod or iPad. But it’s nevertheless a hurdle for customers. $500 for an iPad or $400 for the first-generation Kindle is a lot of cash to drop for folks who want to read. It’s also a levee bottling up a torrent of content that can be sold and delivered over those devices.

With Amazon’s new $79 Kindle, $99 Kindle Touch, $149 Kindle Touch 3G, and $199 Kindle Fire, Amazon dynamites that levee. The devices aren’t free, but they’re so much cheaper than comparable products on the market that they will likely sell millions of copies and many more millions of books, television shows, movies, music and apps.

And more from Steven Levy.

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• Tim Carmody