Interestingly, there are no Kindles for sale on eBay right now.  There had been one, but according to the eBay results of that sale, it was sold as a “Buy It Now” item.  The starting bid had been $499 for the Kindle — $100 above the current retail price.

While there has been speculation that the dearth of Kindles on eBay is the result of each Kindle being “personalized” to a specific Amazon.com account, it is still surprising that Kindles aren’t showing up on eBay.

Only time will tell what this means, but it’s possible that all the Kindle owners are happy with their purchase (at least at the moment) and aren’t willing to sell their new baby for the $100 (or so) profit they might be able to get on eBay.

According to PC Magazine, “the Kindle is the best option out there” for the avid reader who is willing to part with paper.  The review gives the Kindle four dots out of five as its rating.

Amazon.com had previously specified a “back in stock” date of December 17. That has changed and now it is providing no specific date by which the the Kindle will be restocked.

Amazon currently says at its site “Availability: Temporarily out of stock. Order now and we’ll deliver when available. We’ll e-mail you with an estimated delivery date as soon as we have more information.”

Although there’s no way to know for sure, this may mean that the Kindle continues to be popular and that orders for it are piling up.

It now seems like there is a winning eBook reader and that, much as the iPod conquered the personal music market, the Kindle has a good chance of doing the same with books, magazines and other reading materials.

So, maybe it’s time to wonder about the broader impacts of having such a wonderful, new electronic device.

Although it seems hard to imagine that all reading will shift to the Kindle (or its progeny), it is possible to imagine books become like rare medieval hand-written manuscripts are today.  Rare and rarely seen.

To some extent, a successful Kindle may noticeably or drastically reduce the number of old-fashioned books in circulation.  Would that be a problem? Well, yes, in some ways.

It might make it harder for some people (think younger people, poor people, etc.) to get hold of books and reading material.  That would be unfortunate.

It might also lessen the availability of hard documentation for future historians.

Every time a hard disk fails, for instance, documents and emails may vanish forever if the proper backup had not been performed.  Will future electronic devices (and the web services they depend on) somehow go “on the blink” in the future, obliterating important written works?

Will we see rapid changes in technology (making old technology obsolete) such that written material is lost in the transition?  The music comparison comes to mind where we’ve gone from 78 rpm records (does anybody remember these or have any?) to 33 1/3 and 45 rpm records, to 8-track tapes (admittedly, just a flash in the pan and unlikely to have caused any serious music losses), to CDs, mp3s, and iPod/iTunes music.

I know I have a number of 33 1/3 records that have not been commercially converted to CD and the songs on those records will probably fade and die with time.

Will something similar happen to the information contained in books in the future as a result of popular and effective eBook readers?

Let’s hope not.

Already a number of commentators are setting out their wish list for the next version of Kindle. Here are the ones Brad Stone of the New York Times would like to see.

The Casting Out Nines blog offers nine ways to fix the Amazon Kindle. Read it here.

How long will it be before Kindle 2.0 makes its appearance (even though demand for Kindle 1.0 hasn’t yet been satisfied)?

A nice short comparison by Gizmodo of the Amazon Kindle with the Sony Reader has the Kindle standing out because it allows direct download of books without the need for a PC (as is required by the Sony Reader).  See the review here.