Hasta La Gadget!

Amazon has found a relatively clear day in the calendar on which to launch its excellent Kindle Paperwhite e-reader in the British Isles. The ad-supported basic model will knock you back £109, while an extra £60 will get you the 3G version. Amazon’s Lending Library service will roll-out at the same time, offering Prime members free loans from a collection of 200,000 books as part of the £49 per year subscription (which also has other perks). If you’re shopping around, don’t forget that Barnes & Noble’s equally glowing alternative is also available in the UK these days, wearing a pretty much identical price tag.

Amazon’s Kindle Paperwhite coming to the UK on October 25th, starting at £109 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Oct 2012 05:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Amazon has confirmed that the UK, France, and Germany are next in line for the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library system, with the ebook loan program set to launch later in October. The scheme, which launched in the US back in November, and offers subscribers to Amazon Prime a range of books they can borrow on their Kindle. Up to one book per month can be borrowed, with no limit on how long it can be kept.

Amazon says that there will be over 200,000 titles for readers to choose from, with local-language ebooks as well as high-profile inclusions like the full Harry Potter series. Kids, mystery, science fiction, romance, non-fiction, and other categories are catered for.

As for publishers and authors, the Kindle Direct Publishing platform will support Kindle Owners’ Lending Library inclusion too, and the KDP Select fund – which pays out royalties per loan – has also been boosted to accommodate the predicted increase in demand. For October, it’s gone from $100,000 to $700,000, and Amazon says it is planning on another increase for November.

In September, Amazon says, authors were paid $2.29 per-borrow. To use the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library you’ll need an actual Kindle hardware device and to be a Prime subscriber – in the UK, that’s currently £49 per year.

Amazon Kindle Owners’ Lending Library gets Euro launch this month is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you ever wondered how come Amazon’s Kindle e-reader seemed to be amazingly affordable, the cat is out of the bag from the horse’s mouth. Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos has confirmed that their Kindle e-reader is virtually sold “at cost”, where the online retail giant makes money from the Kindle range through the sales of online content. Now, this is more or less an open secret to many for a long time now, considering how Amazon does not have the kind of marketing and clout that Apple has to make money off hardware as well as software.

You know what they say – if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it. The way we see it, Amazon did not really have a choice in pricing their Kindle e-readers higher, since it might be priced out of the market. Better use the same model that video game console manufacturers have espoused most of the time in recent years – lose some money on the hardware, but make up for it on the software front. At least it sees the population of Kindle e-readers grow, while consumption of content increases in tandem. Well, different roads lead to Rome still, with proverbial Rome here being profitability.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Amazon’s Kindle Paperwhite stock runs out, faces shipping delays, Wal-Mart quits selling Kindle tablets,

Amazon’s Kindle Owners’ Lending Library has grown considerably since launching in the US, and it looks like the company’s finally decided it was time to let some other countries in on the service as well. It announced today that Amazon Prime members in the UK, Germany and France would all have access to the service “later this month,” although it’s not providing a specific date just yet. As in the US, it will let folks borrow up to one book a month for free, with over 200,000 titles available to choose from (including “thousands” in the countries’ local languages). Alongside that expansion, Amazon has also announced yet another increase (of $100,000) to its Kindle Direct Publishing Select fund — which pays independent authors who include their books in the Lending Library — with an even bigger one planed for November. No word yet on any additional countries next in line.

Continue reading Amazon extending Kindle Owners’ Lending Library to the UK, Germany and France this month

Amazon extending Kindle Owners’ Lending Library to the UK, Germany and France this month originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Oct 2012 14:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Last week’s release of the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite offered an opportunity to look back on the rapid growth of e-reading, and look forward to what the digitization of publishing will mean to four major market forces: publishers, bookstores, authors and readers. As during any technological disruption, winners and losers trade fates until the upheaval settles and a new cycle of status quo begins.

Amazon is not the only bookstore represented in the scramble for new-era survival, but its major role has multiple dimensions: seller, publisher, enabler, inventor and primary instigator of disruption. Amazon is banking on being a winner, and was recently handed an advantage by the U.S. government in its uneasy relationship with publishers.

While industrial forces work their way through the dislocation of new paradigms, individuals — both book consumers and book authors — stand to be the biggest winners, and that is a good thing.

Continue reading Editorial: Bring on the digital overthrow of publishing

Filed under: Handhelds, Tablets, Wireless, Amazon

Editorial: Bring on the digital overthrow of publishing originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 08 Oct 2012 17:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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