A reading device launched at $399 and sold out within days
Archived Amazon pages and its 2007 annual report state Kindle's launch-day price, wireless delivery, and how quickly it sold out.
- Historical event
- November 19, 2007
- Site publication
- September 18, 2026
The record
Amazon's own product page, captured by the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine on 19 November 2007, the day of the device's release, lists "Kindle: Amazon's Wireless Reading Device" as "In Stock" at "Price: $399.00," with connectivity "via Amazon Whispernet to provide U.S wireless coverage via Sprint's high-speed data network." Amazon's annual report for fiscal 2007, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, confirms the device as part of the company's business that year, stating that Amazon designs, "manufacture[s], market[s] and sell[s] a wireless e-reading device, the Amazon Kindle."
What the documents show
The launch-day snapshot documents price and stock status at the moment of release; it does not itself state how quickly the device sold. A second archived snapshot, captured on 25 November 2007, six days later, shows the same page had changed: it states "Availability: In stock on December 17, 2007," and, further down the page, that "Due to heavy customer demand, Kindle is temporarily sold out," with orders taken "on a first-come, first-served basis." Read together, the two snapshots establish that demand outpaced Amazon's initial supply within a week of release, without requiring a precise hours-to-sellout figure that neither page states. The fiscal-2007 annual report, filed months later, corroborates that the device was already a named line of business but adds no operational detail about the launch itself.
Why it stays interesting
The archived pages capture something a later retrospective cannot: the device's actual on-sale status changing in real time, rather than a company's own after-the-fact summary of how well it sold. For a reader assessing any product-launch claim, the more reliable record is often the machine-captured state of a page at the time, not a subsequent press account of it. This is an editorial observation about method rather than a claim the sources state directly, but it follows from comparing what each snapshot actually shows.
What to read next
A reader could next check the self-publishing and pricing changes that followed Kindle's release in the years after, several of which are documented separately in this record, and Amazon's own 1995 founding filings for a sense of how far the company's ambitions had moved from selling only physical books.
- What does a launch-day archived page establish that a later company retrospective cannot?
- How should a reader weigh a "temporarily sold out" notice against an unverified claim of sellout within a specific number of hours?
- What did Amazon's own annual report choose to say, and not say, about a product already generating public attention?
The Kindle's first week is documented here through the device's own listing page changing under demand, a plainer and more exact record than any retrospective account of the same days.
Sources & reading trail
Archived launch-day product page lists Kindle at $399.00, in stock, with wireless delivery via Amazon Whispernet over Sprint's network.
Source published: Not established · Retrieved: 16 September 2026
Archived page from six days after launch states Kindle is 'temporarily sold out' due to heavy customer demand and shows the in-stock date pushed to 17 December 2007.
Source published: Not established · Retrieved: 16 September 2026
States that Amazon designs, manufactures, markets and sells 'a wireless e-reading device, the Amazon Kindle' as part of its consumer business.
Source published: 11 February 2008 · Retrieved: 16 September 2026
Reports, filings, records and studies establish the entry; the reading of why it stays interesting is Chapter Ledger editorial analysis. This retrospective draft does not imply the site published on the event date.
Continue reading
- A self-publishing tool launched alongside the Kindle itself
- A tender offer worth $300 million took Audible private
- Browse the complete the ledger archive
Sources & reading trail
- Amazon.com, Inc. Annual Report (Form 10-K), fiscal 2007
Source published: February 11, 2008 · Retrieved: September 16, 2026
The documents above establish the record. The reading and the questions are this publication’s editorial analysis, written after the fact.
Published September 18, 2026, not on the date of the event described.