Comments on: Kindle not the book’s iPod moment

By: Jillian Blackall

Jillian Blackall — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 08:46:10 +0000

Jackson, I have ordered a kindle now that it’s officially going to be available to Australia.

With the official availability of the kindle, I would expect the official availability of e-books for it, otherwise people will be very angry about paying $375 for nothing.

I didn’t want to risk doing it unofficially, thinking it would be hard to get support.

By: Peter Feeney

Peter Feeney — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 06:43:57 +0000

It is not just Amazon blocking non US residents. For many years I have been purchasing e-books from a company called Fictionwise and reading them on a Pocket PC but since they were taken over by Barnes and Noble suddenly 75% of the books are labelled US Only and you can’t purchase them without establishing (legitimately or otherwise) that you reside in the US

By: malcolm neil

malcolm neil — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 06:34:00 +0000

No denying from my organisation that some of the market will shift to digital, but I’ve read this piece a number of times and can’t see anyone saying Australians only want to read Australian Books.

You can’t get the kindle version of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol from amazon.com at the moment (unless using the internet savvy methods alluded to by Jackson).

The 5% of market share is the reported size of the market current in the USA, Amazons claims are very general and not audited so can’t be relied on for share of total market.

No doubt this share will increase.

By: Sean Carmody

Sean Carmody — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 06:02:44 +0000

While I am sure that there will be some international rights issues to navigate here (rather like the delays Apple faced in launching the iTunes store in Australia), there is no doubt that this is an indication of things to come. The acrimony over parallel importation issues for “real” books is really fighting yesterday’s battle.

By: Jackson Harding

Jackson Harding — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 03:52:21 +0000

Matthia Dempsey has obviously not used a Kindle. While Amazon have been restricting sales to the US it has been possible to get hold of one in Australia and obtain books for it from Amazon, I have had mine (the larger Kindle DX) for over 6 months, it is indeed the iPod for books. Frankly, it’s the best thing since beer in tins.

The same (slightly convoluted) method I used to obtain my Kindle and the books for it (I won’t go into details, but Google is your friend) will continue to work, even if Amazon attempt to limit the content to certain countries.

And it’s the reverse cultural cringe in extremis to suggest that Australians only want to read Australian books.

By: wayne robinson

wayne robinson — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 03:49:43 +0000

At the moment, you can’t buy any Kindle book from Australia with an Australian credit card, not even books long out of copyright, such as the collected works of Shakespeare. But this is a decision of Amazon, not to allow the sale of ebooks to non-American customers (last weekend, a lot of Americans were complaining that they weren’t able to purchase Kindle books while traveling overseas). I think ebooks will take considerably more than 5% of the market. Amazon claims that the Kindle versions of books take up to 35% of the sales. I also suspect that the Kindle will increase total book sales, not canabalise printed book sales, because the convenience of being able to buy and have delivered any book over the internet will increase demand.