SA consumers have access to 230 000 electronic books on Amazon.com’s online store at launch. That’s the word from the company’s director of Kindle Books, Laura Porco (pictured), who was in Johannesburg on Monday to brief the media about the product’s availability in SA.
The Kindle went on sale worldwide on Monday at a cost of US$279 (excluding shipping costs and country-specific taxes). It is available in more than 100 countries, though the product is shipped directly to customers from the US.
E-books are downloaded wirelessly over 3G networks. The Kindle does not need a Sim card. Rather, it connects seamlessly to mobile operators’ networks. There are no data charges associated with downloading books.
It’s not known which operator or operators Amazon is working with in SA, though it has indicated it is working with AT&T’s worldwide roaming partners — in SA, that’s both MTN and Vodacom.
Porco says the 230 000 e-books available to SA customers represent about 62% of the books available to US consumers. US buyers have access to 370 000 e-books. Amazon launched the Kindle in the US two years ago with a catalogue of 90 000 books. Porco says Amazon is adding “thousands of books a day” to the store.
She says Amazon has been “astounded” at how many e-books it has sold to date, though she declines to provide sales statistics. She says that where both an e-book and a paper book are available in Amazon’s store, the company sells on average 48 electronic versions of the book for every 100 paper versions.
All international newspapers on the Kindle, including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times are available to SA consumers. No SA papers are available yet.
Porco says a larger-screen version of the Kindle, the Kindle DX, will go on sale internationally some time in 2010. — Duncan McLeod, TechCentral
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