Iconic talk show host Oprah Winfrey is endorsing Amazon’s the Kindle, an embedded system for reading electronic books that was launched in the United States back in November 2007.

Previous to the Friday edition of her show, Oprah was featured on the Amazon website in a video trailer, in which she stated she would be revealing her new favourite gadget on Friday afternoon. Although the 24-second commercial did not clearly present the Kindle as being the device she was deeming as life-changing, given that it ran just above a promotion for the e-book reader, it really wasn’t hard for viewers to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

Oprah was joined on her show on Friday by Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos, who was there to talk about the company’s device.

Winfrey played the environmental-friendly card with her audience, stating that even though the Kindle was not quite what one might call a light purchase, being priced at $359, buying electronic books instead of cheaper physical ones would help to save paper.

While endorsing Amazon’s product, she seized the moment to re-affirm her endorsement for the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate Barack Obama, since she listed the books she had on her Kindle, which included the nominee’s „The Audacity Of Hope.” Other writings she mentioned were „The Story Of Edgar Sawtelle” by David Wroblewski, Paulo Coelho’s „The Alchemist,” „The Forever War” by Dexter Filkins and also Wendy Chant’s „Crack The Fat-Loss Code: Outsmart Your Metabolism And Conquer The Diet Plateau.”

Kindle might come into twofold benefits from Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement, since the latter is expected to boost the sales for the gadget, but also to render it to go from a niche market to a mainstream one.