The Kindle, an electronic reader brought out by Amazon two years ago, has become your company’s best-selling product and a great success story. But several rival e-readers are coming out in time for Christmas. What do you think of the Nook, for instance, from Barnes & Noble?
We have a long tradition of not talking about other companies, which I’ll stick to.

Barnes & Noble claims on its Web site that the Nook has several advantages over the Kindle — for one thing, a Nook book can be lent to friends. You can forward the text to another user.
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.

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.

What do you say to Kindle users who like to read in the bathtub?
I’ll tell you what I do. I take a one-gallon Ziploc bag, and I put my Kindle in my one-gallon Ziploc bag, and it works beautifully. It’s much better than a physical book, because obviously if you put your physical book in a Ziploc bag you can’t turn the pages. But with Kindle, you can just push the buttons.

What if you dropped your Kindle in the bathtub?
If it’s sealed in a one-gallon Ziploc bag? Why don’t you try that experiment and let me know.

Of all the books that Amazon sells, what percentage are digital books?
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. It won’t be too long before we’re selling more electronic books than we are physical books. It’s astonishing.

Photo
Credit John Keatley for The New York Times

How quickly are paper books migrating into their digital equivalents?
When we launched Kindle two years ago, it was 90,000 titles, and today it’s more than 350,000. We’re adding thousands of titles every week. Our vision is every book ever printed in every language, all available within 60 seconds.

But so much is missing. I see the so-called Kindle store doesn’t carry “The Catcher in the Rye” or “Franny and Zooey.” Is that because J. D. Salinger has declined to authorize digital editions of his books?
You’d have to ask him.

You’re a longtime science buff who studied electrical engineering and computer science at Princeton. Why did you want to be a bookseller in the first place? You have to go back in time to 1994, and there’s something very unusual about the book category. There are more items in the book category than there are items in any other product category. One of the things it was obvious you could do with an online store is have a much more complete selection.

Initially, Amazon sold books exclusively, but it has since expanded into a retail omnivore that sells basketballs and vacuum cleaners and hamster food and everything under the sun. What is your goal, exactly?
We want to have earth’s biggest selection. Earth’s biggest river, earth’s biggest selection.

Is it true that you add digital books to your holdings on the basis of their popularity and their sales rank in paper form?
Yes, that’s basically true. We also have a self-service platform where small publishers or even self-published authors can put their books on themselves.

How does that work?
Basically you submit the book, you set the price for it, we charge the customer and then we give you 35 percent of the revenue.

And Amazon keeps 65 percent? That sounds like a lot.
Does it? You’re an author, what does your royalty check look like? Are your royalties 35 percent?

No. Let’s not have that conversation.
O.K., I think we’re done.


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