• USA Today, Wednesday, October 7, 2009 10:24 AM

Amazon is cutting the price of its Kindle e-reader by $40 today -- the second price cut in three months -- and it will allow readers in more than 100 countries to wirelessly download English-language content for the first time, Edward C. Baig reports. Before, overseas customers needed a U.S.-based Amazon account and had to transfer books from a computer via USB.

"A book that may take two weeks to get shipped internationally in physical form can now be delivered in less than 60 seconds," Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos tells Baig.

Bezos says the company is cutting the price just because it can, but surely the reduction also reflects increasing competition. "This is going to be a big industry," Bezos says. "There's room for multiple winners."

Indeed, this year has been a "breakout year" for e-books, according to Forrester Research analyst Sarah Rotman Epps. Forrester projects three million e-reader units will be sold in 2009 -- about 900,000 during the forthcoming holiday shopping season (or has that begun already?) -- and it expects sales to double next year.

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