With the unveiling of Apple's iPad late last month, Amazon.com found itself facing a new competitor in the electronic book reader market. But -- as Apple looks to ramp up sales of the iPad -- Amazon is considering a bold plan to get the Kindle into the hands of more people. According to TechCrunch, the Seattle online retailer is toying with an idea to give away a free Kindle to subscribers of its AmazonPrime program.

That offering -- which includes unlimited free two-day shipping and other benefits -- is available for an annual $79 membership fee. That price point is well below the $259 that customers currently pay for the smaller Kindle device, and therefore it could take four years for Amazon to make up the difference. Of course, as TechCrunch points out, Amazon is hopeful that its Prime customers would spend more money buying digital books and therefore they could recoup the losses much quicker.

It appears to be a bold gamble at a crucial moment in the short history of electronic book readers. We've thought in the past that Amazon could pursue interesting partnerships to get wider adoption of the Kindle. For example, could Amazon ink deals with newspaper publishers to offer their subscribers a Kindle at a significant discount or for free?

After all, weekly home delivery of the The Seattle Times costs $5 -- which interestingly equates to the same price of the Kindle.

Amazon has been cagey about disclosing how many Kindles it has sold. During the company's last quarterly earnings report, CEO Jeff Bezos would only say that "millions of people now own Kindles." He didn't specify if that meant one million or 20 million, but the fact is with competition looming Amazon needs to attract as many customers as possible.