Two weeks before its official release, the Kindle e-book reader sits at the top of Amazon’s list of best-selling gadgets.

The $US349 Kindle is ahead of gadget mainstays like the iPhone and iPod. Kindle pre-orders are also ahead of the best-selling GPS navigation system, and the best-selling digital camera.

The amount of e-books sold for Kindle remains a mystery, however.

MediaBistro and CNN have retracted earlier reports that 10% of books sold via Amazon.com are now Kindle downloads – despite only 230,000 titles being formatted for Kindle (a tiny fraction of Amazon’s millions of book, albeit concentrated at the sharp end with 95 of the New York Times top 100 best-seller list now available as Kindle ebooks, usually selling at the flat rate of $US9.99).

An Amazon spokesperson clarified that: "Kindle sales make up more than 10% of sales of books that are available in both traditional and e-book form."

Currently, Kindle is only available in the US, with books delivered via wi-fi, or via a cellular connection with US carrier Sprint.