Amazon.com, Inc., the American e-commerce company based in Seattle, Washington announced Tuesday that it has reached an agreement to acquire Audible Inc.

Audible.com is an Internet provider of spoken audio entertainment, information, and educational programming. The Newark, New Jersey-based company sells audiobooks, radio and TV programs, and audio versions of magazines and newspapers. Through its web sites in the US and UK and alliances in Germany and France, the company offers over 80,000 programs, including audiobooks from well-known authors and spoken word audio content from sources such as The New York Times and The New Yorker.

"Audible.com offers the best customer experience, the widest content selection and the broadest device compatibility in the industry. Working together, we can introduce more innovations and bring this format to an even wider audience." said Steve Kessel, Amazon.com's senior vice president for worldwide digital media.

Audible’s founder and chief executive Donald Katz also expressed his enthusiasm and optimism abut the agreement and said that the deal brings together two companies that share a long history of ceaseless focus on improving the customer experience and his company is “very excited to be joining a company as innovative as Amazon.com."

Amazon believes the purchase of Audible.com for about $300 million will help the company bring to a broader audience’s more than 80,000 programs. The deal is expected to be completed by the second quarter of 2008.

Audible shares rose $2.07, or 22 percent, to $11.40 in midday trading Thursday.

The deal to acquire Audible.com comes after Amazon announced late Wednesday that its profit for the fourth quarter reached the 207 million, or 48 cents a share, more than double from the company’s last fourth quarter when it reported $98 million, or 23 cents a share. The e-commerce company also announced it has recorder sales of $5.67 billion, up 42 percent from $3.99 billion in the same period of last year.