Amazon.com greeted me with a big sign saying – Kindle Now Ships To Canada.
You have to buy Kindle Canada from Amazon.com and not Amazon.ca.
Here’s everything you need to know.
Kindle Canada – What does Canada get
Canada gets all of the following -
- Free access to the Kindle Store via 3G wireless.
- 300,000 English language books.
- $11.99 prices.
- 100,000 books under $5.99.
- Newspapers and Magazines are also available.
What does Canada not get?
- No free Internet.
- $2 extra for books due to wireless delivery charge.
- No wireless delivery of personal documents.
- No Kindle Blogs.
- Prices in Canadian Dollars. Everything will be charged in US dollars.
How much will Kindle 2 cost by the time it gets to you?
- Base Cost – $259.
- Shipping and Handling – $21. That’s for Priority International Courier that gets to you in 2 days.
- Import Fees Deposit: $31.
For a total cost of $311.
Kindle Canada Review
Please read my Kindle Canada review which covers using the Kindle in Canada. It does not include whispernet as that wasn’t available until today (Nov 17th).
My overall experience has been great – Would recommend the Kindle strongly for anyone who loves to read.
Do note that the great experience was -
- Without the wireless store and with no 60 second book downloads.
- With $9.99 books and not $11.99 books.
Those factors almost balance out.
Will Kindle Canada lead to a flurry of sales?
It’ll be interesting to see whether Kindle Canada will lead to tons of sales of the Kindle in Canada or whether it was the fact that Kindle wasn’t available in Canada that people were upset about (rather than not being able to get their hands on one).
Will Kindle Canada Sales be good?
One of the Factors could be the wireless coverage for the Kindle in Canada -
Whispernet Coverage in Canada
While it hardly blankets Canada it covers the major cities well.
The other factor is Sony
Sony have been selling their Sony Readers for a long time (the Touch Edition and Pocket Edition have been available for months) and Canadians can actually play with them at Sony stores and at Best Buy (while the Kindle has to be bought based on pictures and reviews).
However, look at the prices and Sony Reader suddenly isn’t very compelling -
- Kindle 2 is $311 after everything.
- Sony Pocket Edition is $259 before taxes.
- Sony Touch Edition is $399 before taxes.
The Kindle 2 is actually slightly better than the Sony Touch Edition so paying $400 plus taxes for the Sony Touch Edition doesn’t make sense.
Kindle Canada should certainly outsell the Sony Readers this holiday season.
What other competitors does Kindle Canada have?
Well, let’s see -
- The Apple Slate won’t be out until 2010.
- Barnes and Noble’s nook hasn’t been released outside the US and they are having problems meeting demand in the US – so Canada doesn’t get nook this year.
- The other eReaders companies don’t have any brand recognition.
There are no other competitors – it’s Kindle Canada Vs Sony Reader and Kindle’s price advantage (and better overall features – in my opinion) make it the clear #1 choice.
Amazon, by making the Kindle available in Canada, have wrapped up the Canada eReader Holiday Season.
Filed under: kindle 2 | Tagged: kindle canada
Any word on the Kindle 3? As I recall your predictions have slated it to be released shortly…
guess I was wrong.
I kind of thought B&N started this Canadiana battle by announcing their availability Dec 1 in the following:
http://bookclubs.barnesandnoble.com/t5/Unbound-The-eReading-Blog/B-amp-N-eBooks-Are-Coming-to-Canada/ba-p/410312
They specifically say that nooks won’t be available.
Did they start it – yes. However, it’s a rather half-hearted effort if the eReader isn’t available.
Sony took the first step. Amazon have finally responded.
If B&N can get enough stock they might join in early 2010.
Hi I am a big Kindle fan in Canada. I would have already ordered my kindle if I didn’t read your blog yesterday. But as you make kindle 3 so convincing to me, I decided to wait a little bit more.
But as I see from the previous response, you said your guess is wrong, is that because of the Canada release make it less impossible for a new kindle 3 coming out in a row?
And my questions is, should I wait until xmas sale, or there isn’t gonna be one thank you
check Amazon’s holiday returns deal. you an return something you buy until end of January – so, and do confirm this with amazon customer service, you ought to be fine till end of January if you buy a kindle 2 now.
If a kindle 3 comes out in feb – you can always sell your kindle 2 (you’ll get a decent price for it – around $150-$200).
We live in an area of Canada where there is no 3G coverage, only EDGE. How would this affect a Kindle?
book downloads would be a bit slower – 1 to 2 minutes instead of 30 to 60 seconds.
browsing the internet and the kindle would be a bit slower.
try to check around on the official kindle forum at amazon – though don’t know how likely you are to find that exact situation.
It’s not a big deal as it’s not like you will be watching movies.
it will be slower – depends on how important the change in speed is to you? have no idea how to quantify the change.
I have an iPhone where my hometown is in EDGE coverage here in the US. While I’m not thrilled with EDGE on the iPhone, I think the Kindle could run at dial-up speeds an be satisfactory.
Given all of that, I think a worst case example is a Pillars of the Earth book by Ken Follett which is around ~1000 pages and has a file size of ~2000k when downloaded to my pc. This would take ~4 minutes to download at 64 and under a minute during normal operation of Edge at 300-400K.
Other things to consider are that periodicals would be much smaller in size and are downloaded automatically in the background during the night to the Kindle.
I can’t speak for certain on the Kindle, but the iPhone has better battery life on the EDGE network than when running on the 3G network.
Hope that helps
Thanks to all of you – I appreciate the input.
Hi Again:
I’m not much interested in periodicals – do they come automatically? Do I have an option to refuse? I’m just interested in books – nothing else.
You can decide what peridoicals you want. They don’t come by default. You can switch off the free amazon blog.
Thanks Switch11 – appreciate your help
Just wondering how the Kindle 2 displays PDF files. I am hoping to get this device for my father (we live in Ontario) and this sounds great as my parents do not have the internet at home. I have a lot of PDF books that I would like to put on the device before giving it to him for X-Mas, but if it does not work well, I may look for other options.
it works great. It shows charts and tables and supports chinese and almost certinaly other languages in PDFs.
The formulae look fine if you’re reading academic PDFs.
The size is small – However, you can switch to landscape mode to get a bigger font size. That’s the only concern. Send me a few PDFs you were looking to use and I’ll email you photos.
Will add a Kindle 2 and PDFs video soon.
Derek, please see my Kindle PDF Video post.
[...] personal documents wirelessy. For a full list of included and not included features see the Canadian Kindle review. It is a real positive that this choice is now available in Canada but some may choose to see what [...]
Major disappointment – only the Kindle 2 is available in Canada. I have just spent nearly two hours carefully selecting a Kindle DX, and several peripheral devices to go with it. When I attempted to check out I was given the message that they could not ship the Kindle DX to my address (they could ship the peripherals).
After I (finally) found a number for the US Amazon office (Amazon.ca cannot handle any Kindle inquiry) I was told that only the “Global” (read 6 inch screen) unit is available to ship to Canada. The “U.S.” (read 9.7 inch screen) cannot be shipped to a Canadian address.
Are we second class, or on a new axis-of-evil list of banned countries – or what on earth are they playing at??
An international kindle dx is going to be released this year. There have been rumors it might be as soon as the first quarter.
Products just have an easier time of being proven viable in a huge market like the US. Canada will get the Kindle DX down the line – it’s not a conspiracy.
Amazon.com currently lists the ‘latest generation’ Kindle. Is that the Kindle 2? Is the $31 cost you list Duty?
yes. and yes the cost is duty.
The $311 total pricetag for Canadians is in US dollars, isn’t it? Makes it more like $330-$340 delivered from Amazon.com.
True it’s higher. $311 USD is $332 CAD.
Major disappointment has now been changed to a delight. As you probably are now aware, the Kindle DX was released in Canada on January 19th. Mine was shipped from Amazon that day, and has been in use since about an hour after its arrival. Works well even up here in the Ottawa Valley where cell phone coverage is ’spotty’ at the best of times. Excellent readability, and the book download is seamless. I have previously been using a tablet laptop that I bought for e-reader purposes, and the Kindle is far superior. I do not regeret missing the Apple release since a device that is not visible in sunlight is of limited use, and the four hour battery life is just plain sad when compared to the Kindle. The colour display on the Apple is a nice-to-have, but frankly I haven’t had much by way of colour content in my books since I was a kid – would be nice for graphs or magazine illustrations, but not worth the trade-offs such as the Apple with a separate device for a keyboard. I am quite happy (so far) with the DX.
good to hear. I had to cancel my order because am moving. Will be getting one soon – perhaps early Feb or early March.