Archive for the ‘Kindle Outside of USA’ Category
Kobo Wireless eReader heads to Caribbean no comments
Kobo announced today that its Wireless eReader will be available in the Caribbean thanks to a new partnership with Nigel R Khan Bookseller, which has nine stores in Trinidad and Tobago.
Trinidad and Tobago is the southernmost island in the Caribbean and its population of 1.3 million boasts a literacy rate of 92.8 percent.
The Kindle 3 ereader is also available
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Amazon.de launches German Kindle Store no comments
Amazon.de today today announced the launch of a German Kindle Store that will serve customers in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg. The new store launches with over 650,000 titles, making it the largest ebookstore in Germany.
Most of the ebooks in the German Kindle Store are in English — at launch there are 25,000 plus German-language ebooks in addition to about 5,000 free public domain titles in German. The store also has a few German newspapers and magazines. Amazon today also announced a new German Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) website that authors and publishers from around the world can use to publish in any of the Kindle Stores. This should result in a wider selection of German-language titles over time.
The Kindle 3 ereader (with English interface) can now be purchased direct from Amazon.de. German-language versions of most of the various free Kindle apps with Whispersync are now available to enable customers of the German Kindle Store to “Buy Once, Read Everywhere.”
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German Kindle Store Coming? no comments
There are apparently quite a few rumors that Amazon is currently in negotiations with German publishers to open a German version of the Kindle Store as part of Amazon.de. Currently German customers can order the Kindle ereaders from Amazon.com, but if the rumors are true this may change in 2011. At the moment there are not many Kindle books available in German except for some public domain titles.
Negotiations have been difficult because — big surprise — publishers want to set prices and Amazon wants to be able to set the ebook prices itself.
via eReaders.nl
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eReader & Tablet News – 9/4/2010 no comments
Some of the happenings this week which I have not covered elsewhere.
The Kindle DX is back in stock, but the shipping date for new orders of the 6-inch Kindle 3 has been pushed back to September 20. I was hoping Amazon might release a Wi-Fi only Kindle DX, but this didn’t happen.
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Toshiba’s libretto W105 7-inch dual touchscreen laptop is 
now available at Amazon. Recently the W105 made a very brief appearance before quickly selling out.
The libretto W105 has twin 7-inch screens in a clamshell design and runs Windows 7. The two screens can be configured in different ways – you can stretch a single window across both screens or have each screen display a different window. You can also use one display as a virtual keyboard.
Toshiba’s ebook store has not opened yet, but when it does the libretto W105 will be using a reading app powered by Blio to read any ebooks purchased there.
The bad news about the W105 is its price – $1100. It is also rather heavy at 1.8 pounds, and battery life is under 3 hours. Laptop Mag has reviewed the W105 and found that the Kindle for PC app worked better for them than the Blio powered app that comes with the libretto.
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Losses continue to escalate at Borders while online sales grow. Borders reported that in its second quarter ending July 31, 2010, sales were down by 11.5 percent from the same period a year ago, with comparable store sales declining by 6.8 percent. Meanwhile online sales at Borders.com were up over 56 percent over the prior year.
It is good to see that the digital initiatives at Borders are helping, but there is still a long ways to go before they can offset the loss of in-store sales.
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Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear and friends have launched the serial ebook they announced a few months ago. The work is titled The Mongoliad and is available on a subscription basis priced at $5.99 for six months or $9.99 annually. From the press release:
Bestselling authors Neal Stephenson and Greg Bear, along with Subutai Corporation, announced today the launch of The Mongoliad, the first digital novel on a social book platform. A speculative fiction novel set against the Mongol invasion of Europe in the 13th century, The Mongoliad follows a small band of warriors and mystics in a ripping tale of action and adventure set at a time when the Mongol horde’s conquest of Europe seemed inevitable. Key to the development of this tale is the unique collaboration between the authors and the audience through PULP, Subutai’s new platform, which provides a participatory experience only possible in today’s connected digital world. To experience The Mongoliad, visit www.mongoliad.com.
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NASA has launched an HD version of its mobile application which is standing by to touchdown on your iPad. The new 
NASA App HD features live streaming video from NASA Television, an interactive map with links to all the agency’s field centers, quick links to feature stories and launch schedules, a scrolling "alerts banner," and a "NASA Featured" link. The first featured link focuses on women in space.
Free at iTunes.
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meBooks, which is New Zealand’s only dedicated ebook conversion and retail service, is now offering MOBI versions of all titles available through its online ebook store. This will provide support for the Kindle 3, which is now available for order to New Zealand.
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Que Publishing has announced the launch of its new USING series, which includes a free Web edition with each title. The Web version of each book will contain multimedia and will be updated with new content so that it is kept up-to-date.
USING titles are available in all major eBook formats, including Adobe PDF, Amazon Kindle, and ePub.
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Kindle 3 for New Zealand; eBook Price War Heating Up in UK no comments
New Zealand is finally being included in the Kindle family with the introduction of the new Kindle 3 ereaders. The Kindle 3 can be ordered from and shipped to New Zealand. Orders placed now for the Kindle 3 will ship on Sept. 10, 2010. The 6-inch latest generation Kindle with 3G + Wi-Fi is $189 USD and the Wi-Fi only Kindle 3 is $139. The Kindle 3 for New Zealand will not come with an AC adaptor, but will include a USB cable to use for charging. There will initially be 380,000 English-language ebooks available from Amazon for Kiwis to choose from.
The ebook price war brought about by Amazon opening the UK Kindle Store continues to escalate. WH Smith has dropped the price of all of its ebooks by 50 percent and some top selling fiction titles are 66 percent off. Even so, many titles still seem to be slightly more expensive than Amazon’s. Waterstones’ ebook prices seem to be the highest of the three on the titles I checked.
Amazon launched its UK Kindle Store earlier this month with over 400,000 titles. I have not been able to find any hard numbers as to how many ebooks are offered by WH Smith, whose ebook store is powered by Overdrive. Waterstones seems to only have a little over 30,000 ebooks available.
WH Smith has also lowered its price on the Sony Pocket Edition Reader to £99 to match the £99.99 price over at Waterstones.
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Amazon Kindle Store UK Launched; Kindle 3 Now Shipping September 8 no comments
Amazon has launched its UK Kindle Store
Meanwhile, the Kindle 3 ereaders have sold out again and the shipping date has been pushed back to September 8, 2010.
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eReading is Really Big in China 3 comments
Judging by the ever-growing number of ereaders continuously being released in China, it should come as no surprise that ereading is probably more popular there than anywhere else on the planet.
The Independent reports that in 2009 the value of digital publishing surpassed that of traditional publishing in China – this according to China’s General Administration of Press and Publication.
Most of the ereading in China seems to be done on mobile phones. According to Research and Markets almost a half million dedicated ereaders have been sold there in the first half of 2010 – up from just over a quarter million in all of last year.
Will the iPad be going to China any time soon? No official word from Apple, but the iPad has just received a safety certification from the Chinese government – a necessary first step before the iPad can be released there.
And what of the Kindle? The Kindle 3 will support the Chinese language (both Simple and Traditional) along with several other new languages. There have been recent rumors that Amazon might be planning to launch the Kindle ereader in China in the near future – rumors fueled in part by a job opening posted briefly on Amazon.cn for a “Sr. Product Manager, Amazon Kindle.”
Sony announced in May that it would be releasing its ereader in China this year as well. There are an estimated 200 to 300 million book readers in China, so it could prove to be the most lucrative market for ereaders, especially as Chinese readers seem to be wholeheartedly embracing digital reading. On the other hand, rampant piracy may make it a much more challenging market for selling ebooks than the West.
I’m wondering if the Kindle Store here in the US will start carrying ebooks in the newly supported languages once the Kindle 3 is shipping? There seem to be very few Chinese or Korean Kindle books at the moment. There are more books in Japanese, but most of these seem to be Japanese public domain classics (did you know that Genji Monogatari, written in the eleventh century, is usually considered to be the world’s first novel?). There also do not yet seem to be many books that would use the Cyrillic character set offered by the Kindle 3.
Currently, the only non-English content that you can easily search
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Kindle for Mac Released no comments
Amazon has just announced the release of the promised Kindle for Mac
From Amazon’s press release:
With Kindle for Mac, readers can take advantage of the following features:
- Purchase, download, and read hundreds of thousands of books available in the Kindle Store
- Access their library of previously purchased Kindle books stored on Amazon’s servers for free
- Choose from 10 different font sizes and adjust words per line
- Add and automatically synchronize bookmarks and last page read
- View notes and highlights marked on Kindle, Kindle DX, and Kindle for iPhone
- Read books in full color including children’s books, cookbooks, travel books and textbooks
Several features will be added to the Kindle for Mac app in the near future, including full text search and the ability to create and edit notes and highlights. Kindle for Mac is available to customers around the world as a free download.
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Kindle DX Global to Start Shipping Tomorrow no comments
Amazon is due to start shipping the Kindle DX with global Wireless
Since Amazon first announced the global wireless connection for the 6-inch Kindle ereader a little over three months ago Kindles are now available in several countries that were not included in the original Kindle Global release. These countries, which now do get Kindles, include Argentina, Canada, Chile and Thailand.
Refurbished Kindle DX ereaders with US wireless don’t seem to be available at the moment, but there are a few sellers of used Kindle DX’s with US wireless
This also seems to be true of the Kindle 2; there are no more refurbished Kindle 2 ereaders at the moment, so I am presuming that Amazon has sold out of their stock. You can buy used Kindle 2′s
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Kindle International Country Details no comments
I’ve reformatted the country specific details for the International Kindle
There is also some more news regarding the Kindle International ereader.
The Globe and Mail is reporting that Amazon is currently in negotiations with Canadian telecoms and it sounds as though there is a good chance that the Kindle ereader will be available in Canada in time for the holidays.
There may also be a Kiwi version of the Kindle International pretty soon as well. New Zealand PCWorld is reporting that Amazon is in “deep discussions” with Vodafone to bring the Kindle to New Zealand.
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