Kindle Review – Kindle Fire Review, Kindle 4 Review

First, let’s start with a few free and 1 cent kindle books first found on October 7th -

1. Affirming the Apostle’s Creed by J. I. Packer.
2. Witch and Wizard by James Patterson. Courtesy Book Reviews by Jess.  
3. On the Heels of Evil by D. E. Baum. 1 cent.

That brings the total for free kindle books in October to 7.

Kindle News from around the World

1. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was talking at Erasmus University in the Netherlands and played down Kindle Netherlands and eReaders in general -
   

   We have a device for reading. It’s the most popular device in the world. It’s the PC. But no, we are not interested in e-readers ourselves.

2. On the plus side, Mr. Ballmer did say that he would love to see Amazon and others brings their books to the PC. Kindle for PC would certainly be nice.
3. The Globe and Mail talk about Kindle Canada – Apparently, Amazon is trying to find the best deal for wireless service.  
4. Telegraph speculates that threat from competitors is why Amazon rushed Kindle UK.
5. Waterstones reacted to Kindle UK by dropping the price of Sony Readers (both touch and pocket editions) by 20 pounds each.
6. Kindle New Zealand might be around the corner – or so claims NBR in New Zealand. They have gotten confirmation from Vodafone NZ that Vodafone are in talks with Amazon regarding Kindle New Zealand.
7. Kindle Brazil becomes more compelling with the addition of the first Brazilian newspaper in the Kindle Store – O Globo.

It’s really interesting to see all the Kindle related developments taking place around the world. The International Kindle has galvanized a lot of companies and a lot of people into action.

Kindle Editions getting 48% of Sales when available

Wired spoke with Mr. Bezos about the Kindle and got some juicy details -

1. Mr. Bezos disclosed that for books available in Kindle Editions, they make up 48% of sales. That number is unbelievably impressive.  
2. Mr. Bezos mentioned that there is sizeable demand for English language books in non-English countries. 
3. Book royalties are paid out based on territory of purchase.
4. He had a really good answer to publishers who delay Kindle Edition releases -
   

   “When you’re on NPR and someone goes on their Kindle to look for the book, it’s your chance to make that sale,” he said. “They won’t remember in a month or two.”

Take the ‘window of opportunity to sell a book’ concept with the fact that 48% of sales are kindle editions and it’s suicide for publishers to be delaying kindle edition release dates.

Its amusing to see Wired write this  -

 The new version, with the snappy name of “Kindle with US and International Wireless,”

Snappy? Yes, if by snappy you mean ridiculously long and not at all memorable.

Other Kindle Related News

1. Sarah Epps talks about how Forrester Research have upped their eReader Sales estimates for 2009 to 3 million.
2. Cool-er will get a placement on home shopping network QVC in early December. WSJ also breaks the news that Cool-er are on target to sell 160,000 to 200,000 units by end of the year and that Cool-er’s partnership with Google Books boosted sales and traffic.  
3. Sergey Brin, CTO of Google, writes in the New York Times about A Library to Last Forever. 
4. Mashable rehashes the B&N going with Plastic Logic news and adds two rumors i.e. it’ll be a color ereader, and it might be out by next month.

Filed under: free books, news