Amazon’s eBook reader “Kindle” is available (link here) to ship in Canada today for $259 (USD) and has over 300,000 books and magazines around the U.S. $11.99 or less mark. They say that “Kindle wirelessly downloads books, magazines and newspapers to a crisp, high-resolution 6-inch electronic ink display that looks and reads like real paper. Kindle utilizes the same 3G wireless technology as advanced cell phones, so you never need to hunt for a Wi-Fi hotspot”.
Ian Freed, vice president of Kindle said “We know that Canadians are passionate about books and reading, and we’re excited to make Kindle available to our customers there. Kindle enables customers around the world including Canada to think of a book and start reading it in under 60 seconds.”
Also today rival Indigo’s “Shortcovers”, the ebook reader for your mobile device, has announced that the “world needs more Canada” and has “just signed an agreement to carry thousands of newly digitized works from Canadian-owned publishers… We’re so proud to be the first retailer to take part in this initiative. We’ve always believed that book lovers should be able to get ebooks anywhere, anytime, and that Canadian content is something the whole world should be able to enjoy.”
It will be interesting to see how these two eBook reader organizations compete. CTO Michael Serbinis of Chapters Indigo has stated in the past that Shortcovers is the “Kindle Killer”. Now that Kindle is actually in our yard we’ll see who stays the course
