Kindles are available to order for US$279 (A$313) from the Amazon website now and will begin shipping from 19 October to users in ‘more than 100' countries--though not yet to New Zealand.
Content and price issues
At the time of the international Kindle launch Amazon claimed non-US users would have access to around 200,000 Kindle titles, however it appears that very few of these will be frontlist titles and that even fewer will be Australian--with Lonely Planet thus far the only Australian publisher to confirm it is making its titles available.
Amazon has confirmed it will respect territorial copyright protection in the UK by not selling US ebook titles for which there is a UK local copyright holder and WBN understands that the company will do the same in Australia.
‘This is not a device tailored to the Australian market,' said Australian Booksellers Association CEO Malcolm Neil of the dearth of titles available to Australian Kindle users. Neil said that the lack of content, coupled with the news that Australians will pay 40% more than US users for content, meant the Kindle would not threaten Australian booksellers' sales. However, Neil told WBN he hoped the international launch of the Kindle and attendant publicity would ‘put more pressure' on local publishers to make Australian territorially protected titles available in ebook format.
Citing recent Amazon figures that indicate that when an ebook and a physical book are available there is an almost 50-50 split in sales of each format, Neil said that the local bookselling industry could not afford to let an overseas retailer corner the ebook market. ‘When ebooks do take off it's still only going to be five percent of the market,' he said. ‘But we can't afford to lose five percent.'
Lonely Planet titles available; S&S to come by Christmas
‘Lonely Planet is excited to make over 600 travel guides available by book or chapter from Australia to Zanzibar to Kindle customers around the world,' Lonely Planet CEO Matt Goldberg told WBN. ‘Our goal is to be an indispensable source of information to travellers wherever they are and consumers can now pack as many Lonely Planet guides as they want into Kindle's 10.2 ounces.'
Other local publishers whose US counterparts have made ebook titles available through Kindle have not been so quick to come to an agreement with the US retailer, though Simon & Schuster managing director Franscois McHardy told WBN his company hoped to have local ebook titles available on Kindle ‘before Christmas'.
‘We'll be creating local ebook editions in house,' he said, adding that S&S in the US would host these titles--which would ultimately be available in several formats, not just the proprietary Kindle format.
Kindle in New Zealand: not yet
Martin Taylor, director of New Zealand's Digital Book Publishing Forum told WBN he was surprised to find that New Zealand was not among the countries where the new Kindle was now available.
However, confirmation by Vodafone that it was in discussions with Amazon to bring the device to New Zealand indicates that a suitable telecommunications partner may be all that is stopping the US bookseller from launching its ereader in the country.
Writing on his eReport blog, Taylor said that the delay would enable ‘booksellers and other industry players' to ‘knuckle down and work on bringing their own ebook plans forward, ahead of the Amazon juggernaut'.
Taylor said the Digital Publishing Forum's 1000 Great New Zealand Ebooks project would be instrumental in preparing the local market for ebook production and distribution. ‘We've got a digital warehouse that's going to be live very shortly so publishers will have all the back-end [infrastructure] that they will need here in New Zealand,' he said. ‘We expect that we'll have a lot more people digitally reading with this project that we would have had [without it].'
Not the only device
Kindle has garnered widespread media attention thanks to the brand recognition of Amazon but is not, of course, the only ereader on the market. The Dymocks chain and Melbourne's Reader's Feast both stock a range of ereaders including, in Dymocks' case, the recently launched ECO Reader, the iLiad and the new 5-inch BeBook ‘Mini' reader, which retails for $389.
BeBook's Robert van Geest told WBN that while the BeBook faced similar challenges, in terms of content, as the Kindle, its flexibility (it can read documents in over 20 formats) and price point would nonetheless make it an attractive proposition for readers.
‘We expect a lot for Christmas, at that price bracket--we think that's a price bracket where it becomes affordable,' he said.
Van Geest is among those--including several publishers--who believe the coming year will see dramatic change on the ebook front as various ereaders fight for market share. However, Dymocks CEO Don Grover said publishers and booksellers should not be overly concerned with any one ereader.
‘We're finding consumers like the wide screen of a laptop computer instead', he told WBN.
