NYT: A talk w/ Jeff Bezos - and Sharing Kindle books

The New York Times interviews Jeff Bezos briefly, who is mum about the competition (when asked about his thoughts on the Nook) as usual.

 When Deborah Solomon, the interviewer, asks about Barnes and Noble's point that a Nook book can be lent, Bezos responds:

' The current thing being talked about is extremely limited. You can lend to one friend. One time. You can’t pick two friends, not even serially, so once you’ve loaned one book to one friend, that’s it.

  [Not mentioned is that the publisher must allow the feature and many publishers are said to be resisting.]

You have to pick just one person? What are you saying? It’s like “Sophie’s Choice”?

It is “Sophie’s Choice.” Very nicely done. ' [More on this below]

  On reading a Kindle in the bathtub, Bezos uses a one-gallon Ziploc bag, as do many Kindle owners, judging from water-protection-bag review boards and notes at the various Kindle forums.  Seems to work well for most.  You can move the buttons inside the bag.

  On Kindle book sales, he reiterates that "For every 100 copies of a physical book we sell, where we have the Kindle edition, we will sell 48 copies of the Kindle edition."

See the rest of the Q&A at the NYT site.

* Sharing Kindle books on an account
  A hot subject for a few months on the Amazon Kindle forums now has its own forum thread and describes how some Kindlers are sharing their books by using existing features and guidelines for their Kindle accounts.

  Essentially, while you can have as many Kindle devices (these include iPhones, iPods, PC with Kindle for PC, etc.) on your account as wanted, most books can be shared with only up to 5 other Kindle devices on your account simultaneously.

  You can register a friend's Kindle under your account (a good amount of trust is involved in this with the friend's ability to buy and download books using your account and having access to your entire library.

  There is no physical household restriction.   If friends buy books you don't want, they can use Paypal or something more traditional to cover it.  At any time, friends can choose to register their Kindles for themselves again; any downloaded shared books stay with them and each of those copies also will go against your licensed count for that book.

Read the thread for more details and answers to people's questions about that.  I'm not making a recommendation here but describing how people are using the guidelines to share books.