What do Oprah Winfrey, Hilary Clinton, Stephen King and Arnold Schwarzenegger have in common? Apart from the ability to scare you on occasion that is. The answer is that they have all, in different ways, provided good publicity for Amazon’s Kindle reader.

Oprah was a fairly early adopter. As long ago as 2008 Oprah announced to the world that the first Kindle was her “favourite new gadget”. She also interviewed Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder and CEO on her show and provided the Kindle with a glowing testimonial. It was a real shot in the arm for Amazon.

Stephen King, the world’s best selling author, wrote a special novella – “Ur” – to mark the launch of Amazon’s second generation reader, the Kindle 2, in February 2009. Without giving the story away, the plot related to the use of the Kindle itself and what took place when an English teacher buys himself a Kindle reader after splitting up with his girlfriend. King read extracts from the book live at the official launch of the Kindle 2. More good publicity for Amazon.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his role as Governor of California, introduced a program to make free electronic textbooks available in Californian schools. The program, which has a number of staged phases, was intitated in August of 2009. It seemed that, at least as far as electronic textbooks were concerned, the future had arrived somewhat faster than many had anticipated. When all’s said and done, if big Arnie thinks that they’re a good idea who’s going to tell him he’s wrong?

Also on the subject of education, the New Democratic Leadership Council, a Washington think-tank of which Hilary Clinton is a member, produced a white paper entitled “A Kindle In Every Backpack”. The paper espoused the benefits of introducing electronic books and e-book readers into the American system of education. Whilst the report acknowledged that other devices could be used the fact that the Kindle was referenced throughout the document, and even included in the title, was great publicity for Amazon.

The above examples are no more than four snapshots of the kind of exposure the Kindle reader has managed to achieve. Throughout 2009, the Kindle produced a huge amount of publicity, chiefly for itself but also for e-book readers as a whole. It’s easy to see how the Kindle has managed to secure a 60% share of the e-book reader market in America.

There are now a lot of companies with their own e-book readers on the market. Although some of these boast technical functionality which, in some areas at least, outstrips the Amazon Kindle, there just doesn’t seem to be the same buzz about any of them that existed, and to a large extent still exists, around the Kindle. It’s very difficult to see where the Kindle Killer is going to come from – unless it’s the next Kindle upgrade itself of course (the Kindle 4?).