Amazon’s latest Kindle smallest, most expensive

Will loyal fans of e-books be willing to pay tablet prices for dedicated e-readers Amazon is about to find out.

The e-commerce giant’s latest Kindle is its smallest and lightest yet. But it’s also the most expensive, at $290 — almost a hundred bucks more than the current champ, the $200 Kindle Voyage. Now the company is betting that its sleek frame and a cover that doubles as a rechargeable battery will attract dedicated e-book users to its eighth generation device, called the Kindle Oasis.

Amazon says the new Kindle is 30 per cent thinner and 20 per cent lighter than previous Kindles. It’s also asymmetrical, with a grip on one side for one-handed reading. (Lefties can just flip the device over.)

The company’s goal “To make the device disappear,” said Neal Lindsay, vice president of Amazon Devices, so that people can read without distraction.

The e-reader landscape has experienced a few plot twists since Amazon introduced the first Kindle in 2007. Sales surged for a few years, but started levelling off around 2012 as e-readers grew more commonplace. They even dipped slightly in 2013 but then rose 3.8 percent to $3.37 billion dollars in 2014, according to the most recent stats available from the Association of American Publishers.

Although the market has matured, it’s still a growing category for Amazon year-over-year, the company says. (It doesn’t, though, release sales figures.) Meanwhile, Amazon has launched several other devices, including its Kindle Fire tablets, Fire TV streaming stick and set top box, and the Echo smart speaker.

But dedicated e-readers help drive e-book sales at Amazon, which publishes many itself via Kindle Direct Publishing. They can also serve as a gateway drug that helps draw people to other goods and deals on Amazon, including its Prime membership programme.