Over dinner last night I was speaking to a friend about getting an Amazon Kindle, something that resumed my gadget lust for the device. I’ve been debating getting a Kindle or waiting for a Nook or even getting an eslick which is basically a PDF reader, something the Kindle is particularly painful (and expensive as you need to pay Amazon to load a PDF onto the Kindle) to work with.
Impulsively I went onto the Amazon site and added two Kindle’s and a protective case for each one. Before I went to the checkout though, I felt an urge to see what books I could find on the site. I’d heard this horrible rumour that the book store was basically neutered so I thought I’d check it out. Sadly, I was correct and once I logged into my Amazon account I was taken to the “African” store.
In the African store the bestseller is a book called “When Night Falls” which is according to the categorisation, a romance novel. Of the top 5 bestsellers, three are romance novels. Now I love a bit of saucy literary works but surely this lack of books is a major turn off for most people?
In order to make sure it wasn’t just African users having terrible taste in books and thus artificially affecting the bestseller list I did some random searches. First up, I looked for Ayn Rand as I’d really like to read both “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged”. I found about ten different copies of her first book “Anthem” but none of the other books. Still, Ayn Rand isn’t exactly mainstream so I decided to search for popular illiterate, Dan Brown. Strangely enough, there was no Dan Brown books in the African Kindle store. We also get the free books that you can get in the US store for two dollars which is basically the premium we pay for not being in the US. While it’s a bit ridiculous to pay an extra two dollars for a book, it’s still cheaper than buying it in SA.
My moral is this: If you want to buy a Kindle then just make sure you can find the books that you might actually want to read rather than Project Gutenberg rejects. I cannot for the life of me understand why there is a specific licensing issue considering we’re actually paying for the content. Let me put it this way, the moment the store gets better books or is opened up to all the books available in the US store there will be a Kindle with my name on it shipping to SA. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy those saucy romance novels.
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Why buy a kindle and books online when you can buy a real book? The kindle has no appeal to me.
Thanks for the heads up on this one. The temptation to get myself a Kindle has been great, but I think I’ll wait for Amazon to stop treating me like some illiterate savage before I buy. (Or, hopefully someone else starts selling more open devices around here soon.)
Donmulto, for me the answer to that question is very simple. Space. The kindle is a single object with the capacity for carrying hundreds or thousands of books in its memory. It allows you to annotate each of those books. It’s small and portable. It saves on killing trees.
Good point Saul. I’d also love to have one, but paying R2k to R3k for it and then still not getting the content you want… they need to re-think it first.
I downloaded it yesterday and gave it a try. It does have a lot of work to go, but I like the idea and I hope to see a lot of improvements in the future. But it’ll be nice to throw some free books into it as well as some things from around the web.
Thanks for the write-up. A darn pity we’re not better supported, I was actually considering something along these lines.
Looking through the Barnes & Noble eBook FAQ’s, I see they don’t support purchases from South Africa (or anywhere else internationally for that matter):
“You can download eBooks from your eBooks Library that have already been purchased. You will not be able to purchase eBooks if you are traveling outside of the United States.”
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/ebooks/help-faqs.asp?cds2Pid=8510&linkid=1502801
As Diaan so eloquently put it, when they stop treating us like illiterate savages, I may reconsider getting one of these… until then, I’m going to have to get a bookshelf to store my purchases.
Thanks for the heads-up, was about to buy a Kindle too, but if this is how Amazon sees me, then I’m not interested, thank-you.
There are many alternative ereaders to the kindle which don’t lock you in to amazon, and many alternative sources of e-books on the net. I’ve deliberately decided against the kindle, because I don’t want to be stuck with potential obsolescence of the amazon proprietary format as well.
The kindle is really cool, but I did some investigation into the business model behind it. While its a great idea that will no doubt be picked up by other companies that will make the technology more open, I cant help but feel that Amazon will have too much power over what you have purchased. Its the small things you forget which mean a lot, like being able to give your old books to a school, friend, family or coworker, that old human trait of sharing
. Or even being able to resell your finished books. The other argument is your book collection would be directly dependant on the survival of Amazon as a company.
I imagined travelling around south america with one, running out of batteries on a remote beach in Colombia wouldnt go down well. And the sand might not agree.