Image: Amazon

Ten years ago, on November 19th, 2007, Amazon introduced Kindle to the world, for US$399. It sold out in five and a half hours, even though there were just 88,000 books available for download. The device remained out of stock for five months until late April 2008. Today, the store has over 7 million e-books available in the United States.

However, that’s hardly Kindle’s greatest success: that honor goes to the fact it released the creativity of millions of writers, allowing them to publish their manuscripts directly on Amazon’s store without having to wait for a publisher’s approval.

Standing On The Shoulders Of Sony

The Kindle’s development started in 2004 when Jeff Bezos tasked his employees to build the world’s best e-reader before Amazon’s competitors could. He had good reason to be wary, as Sony had already released Librie and the long-forgotten Rocket eBook was starting to gain…