Amazon's Kindle Store opens digital doors in UK
By Vlad Savov 
posted August 5th 2010 7:51AM
posted August 5th 2010 7:51AM
AMAZON.CO.UK LAUNCHES KINDLE STORE WITH THE BIGGEST SELECTION AND LOWEST PRICES
Over 400,000 books available including 84 of the 100 Nielsen UK Bestsellers
August 5, 2010
LUXEMBOURG-5th August 2010 - Amazon.co.uk today launched the UK Kindle Store (www.amazon.co.uk/kindlestore) with the biggest selection and lowest prices of any e-bookstore in the UK. Over 400,000 books are now available from the UK Kindle Store, including 84 of the 100 Nielsen UK Bestsellers. On 29th July, Amazon.co.uk started taking pre-orders for the all-new Kindle featuring a new electronic-ink screen with 50 percent better contrast than any other e-reader, a new sleek design with a 21 percent smaller body while still keeping the same 6-inch-size reading area, and a 15 percent lighter weight at just 8.7 ounces (247 grams). The all-new Kindle with free 3G wireless is available for £149 and Kindle Wi-Fi for only £109.
The UK Kindle Store features a vast selection of titles, including New Releases and Bestsellers, from UK authors including Terry Pratchett, Ian Rankin, Martina Cole, Sophie Kinsella and Ken Follett. The selection includes exclusives to the Kindle Store such as contemporary classics from the Wylie Agency's new Odyssey Editions imprint including Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children," John Cheever's "The Stories of John Cheever," Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita," Norman Mailer's "The Naked and the Dead," and Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man." The Kindle Store also features a host of top titles not available at other leading e-bookstore stores such as BBC Samuel Johnson Prize winner "Nothing to Envy" by Barbara Demick, "Family Ties" from Danielle Steel and "Broken" by Karin Slaughter, and over 1 million free titles are available to download and read on Kindle.
Customers can pre-order their Kindle today and any books that they purchase from the Kindle Store will be available to read on the device the moment it arrives.
"The Kindle Store offers the largest selection of the most popular books people want to read at low prices," said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President of Kindle Content, Amazon.com. "The all-new Kindle will begin shipping at the end of the month, but customers can start reading books from the massive UK Kindle Store today by downloading any of our free Kindle apps for the most popular devices."
Kindle lets you buy your books once and read them everywhere-on Kindle, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, Mac, PC, and Android-based devices. Amazon's Whispersync technology syncs your place across all devices, so you can pick up where you left off. With Kindle Worry-Free Archive, books you purchase from the Kindle Store, and any notes or annotations you create, are automatically backed up online in your Kindle library on Amazon.co.uk where they can be re-downloaded wirelessly for free, anytime.
Below are Kindle book prices for a selection of Amazon.co.uk's current Bestsellers:
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest Stieg Larsson £2.70
The Help Kathryn Stockett £2.79
One Day David Nicholls £2.79
The Lost Symbol Dan Brown £3.41
The Legacy Katherine Webb £3.35
Eclipse Stephenie Meyer £3.14
I Shall Wear Midnight Terry Pratchett £8.54
Artemis Fowl and the Atlantis Complex Eoin Colfer £5.84
Eat, Pray, Love Elizabeth Gilbert £3.58
The Third Man Peter Mandelson £11.25
"Amazon.co.uk has been a destination for millions of book customers since 1998 and our new Kindle Store introduces another way for passionate readers to take full advantage of our vast selection and great prices," said Greg Greeley, Amazon Vice President, European Retail. "The opening of the UK Kindle store allows customers to buy content in pound sterling and offers a great shopping experience including UK customer reviews, recommendations, bestseller lists and customer service."
Over 170 top UK and international newspapers and magazines are also available in the UK Kindle store for single purchase or subscription. UK titles in this selection include The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail, The Economist, The Independent, The Financial Times and The Evening Standard. Kindle customers can also subscribe to over 9,000 blogs. All subscriptions are auto-delivered wirelessly to Kindle and start with a free 14-day trial.
Customers can visit the new UK Kindle Store now at www.amazon.co.uk/kindlestore.
Customers can discover full details and pre-order the new Kindle and Kindle Wi-Fi at www.amazon.co.uk/kindle3G and www.amazon.co.uk/kindleWi-Fi.
For new high-resolution images of the new generation Kindle, visit www.amazon.com/pr/kindle/images.
Looks awesome. I bought a Kindle 2 a few months ago for £160 :(.
I'll get the new one when its out anyway
Maybe a bit off-topic, but i'll be travelling to the USA. are there stores where i can buy a kindle 2?
Best
Sg
It's more compelling that it ever has been before, but am I wrong for wanting to hold out for a standard eBook format that's cross-platform? It's like iTunes all over again.
@RincewindWiz When I say "Cross platform" I really mean "Not propriety" - I appreciate that there are Kindle apps for most things.
@RincewindWiz Whilst I agree with this, the real draw for me is subscription magazines and newspapers, as well as a nice way to read Wikipedia and RSS feeds. I don't plan on storing any of this, so I don't mind what format it's in..
@RincewindWiz The problem is not the standard file format but the different DRM systems.
There is little difference between epub and prc/mob/azw. Both are just html in a zip container and are easily supported or converted. The thing that blocks interoperability are the different DRM systems which are there to block competition.
This is tempting now we have proper UK support :D
Too little, too late... who want to read in a black and white restricted environment, with a very slow update screen... I'll stick with my iPad and pick up a decent Android colour reader, when they are released later this year.
@bigsofty I don't understand what everyones' problem is with no colour on an E-BOOK READER! It's for reading bloody text, and unless multicoloured text and fancy images improves your enjoyment of a novel or a magazine I really don't see the point in adding colour (and cost) to the package.
@darkshine And it only took three years.
Really glad about this. I bought a book recently on the Amazon store for $1.16 to give it a go (I could read the book on my phone and PC) but my bank (Natwest) slapped an extra £2.00 charge on the transaction because I was paying in dollars. That quickly put an end to my e-book tryout.
Now I can actually buy English books with English monies, hurrah!
@Richiban
With any luck they might also be written in English rather than American...
* Ducks *
Am i missing something, why would anyone want to pay to get webpages on the kindle?
@puppethead Webpages? You don't have to pay to browse the web... The browser's only very basic anyway.
@puppethead
I agree that the Kindle is not really for browsing the web. Thats why I'll probably be getting the WiFi one only.
My Kindle 2 has free 3g and I have never used it since I sync all my books with my laptop library.
@Richiban
Go and look at the kindle site, eg BoingBoing =£1.99 per month! For what, a grab of an rss feed? These are the kind of things I would expect the kindle software to be doing for me for free.
@puppethead You're not paying for the feed, you're paying for the nice premium easy-feel to reading it. It's the premium packaging of a product you can get for free in the browser - I don't see a problem with that, it's not like they're blocking you from getting it for free.
This is a black & white e-reader so why a keyboard it is a waste of real estate, put a touchscreen & onscreen keyboard & make the screen digger & this would be a killer e-reader, but not now, the screen is to small for the hardware dimensions.
:0(
@Newwales a touchscreen would make it more expensive and make a fingerprint-y mess of the screen. And this keyboard makes it perfect for anyone wanting to annotate a document - a real draw for students, teachers, etc..
@Newwales
It's the exact same size as a paperback page...
@Newwales
This has always been my issue with the Kindle. The keyboard either takes up potential screen space, or makes the whole device bigger. I wouldn't mind if I would be using the keyboard a lot but surely you'll be reading more than typing so the keyboard is a waste of space. It's a bit like the argument for a physical keyboard on a smartphone - I can see the point of one if I'm going to be doing a lot of messaging but otherwise I'd rather have either a bigger screen or smaller device.
@Newwales
Pick one up and read a few dozen pages and you'll get it. The screen is considerably smaller than a paperback page, but it doesn't have to be as big. I'm not saying I wouldn't want a touch screen at all, but I haven't really wished it had one since I've had my K2.
It's really a matter of the product "feeling right" even if on paper it doesn't look like the ultimate gadget. Because it's not the ultimate gadget, it's a dedicated book replacement.
@Newwales
Touchscreens reduce clarity and readability and increase glare, things you really don't want in a book reader.
£3.99 a month for a FREE newspaper?! Do these companies think we're all stupid? You print ink on paper...physical entities that cost actual money...and hand that out free, yet you want money for a digital copy?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B002VPE6VQ?pf_rd_p=210989667&pf_rd_s=center-5&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_i=341677031&pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_r=0G0RCEPG16949TXNWF66
@Tes
Even worse paper doesn't include VAT but digital books do! So that 20% VAT makes good old paper look cheep.
@Tes Free newspapers run on advertising. No advertising on Kindle == no advertising revenue == more expensive.
I've heard this argument so many times it's boring me now. But OTOH I prefer to pay for ad-free (or ad-light) media than get cheap tat that answers to their advertising revenue instead of their readership.
I'm sure Amazon will provide an ad platform for all you people who think you can get something for nothing -_-
@darkshine
"no advertising revenue == more expensive"
I'm sorry, but where is the additional cost? If there WAS no Evening standard I'd understand, but what is it you're getting here? Text. Text that, if the Kindle didn't exist, would STILL be written and printed. The cost of distributing it falls on Amazon. So where's the "more expensive" part?
@Tes Are you suggesting that they should provide it for free? Coz I think you might be confused with how a business works :/
@Tes The news paper supplies editions for free to customers who will view its ads. For customers who will not view the ads, they charge a fee. This is to offset their revenue loss if you switch from ad-driven to ad-free and has nothing to do with distribution costs.
I'll wait and see the reviews of the new kindle yet im torn between buying a kindle and keeping my iPhone or get rid of it and carry an iPad and some pos phone.
@rob47 All depends what you want - an iPad has a backlight, so it's not really a reader of any sort - you could read a Kindle for, well, as long as you can read a book, without any of the eye-strain you get off a backlit device.
@darkshine I'd like an e-reader but I'm not a fan of e-ink screens the iPad has a nice screen and does everything my phone does apart from phone and I couldn't afford the contract for both.
@rob47
I'm going with an iPad but that's purely because I want to use it for other purposes. If I solely wanted an eReader then I think the Kindle is a better choice.
@Kelmon Yeah I want it for other things to (read I've spent too much money on apps). But then 3G or not 3G is the new question.
Is that flag image for real? It's totally busted - the left half of it is correct, but the right half is upside-down.
@mmusante Only the top left corner is correct. The other 3 are wrong.
@d0mth0ma5 whoops! You're right.
@d0mth0ma5 Nah, the whole thing is wrong. If you correct the top left corner to match the others, the flag is inverted. An inverted Union Jack is just about the most insulting thing that could be posted. It's equivalent to posting a US flag being ripped to pieces.
I'm kind of shocked that the flag was put up that way, that hardly anyone noticed, and that Engadget doesn't seem to care about the insult caused.
@mmusante Apologies for that, image has now been corrected.
@Vlad Savov cheers for that
Nice to see official support to the UK from Amazon.
I just read "Our Tragic Universe" using the Android Kindle Software. I was going to buy the book, but it was so much cheaper for the Kindle version. Trust me - reading a book on an old HTC Magic is an experience - just not a pleasant one!
Have now pre-ordered the new UK Kindle, but am not optimistic at whether new bestsellers will be competitive over 'ere...
@brianM
From what I've read British prices are likely to be lower, as they aren't set by the "Agency Model" as they are in the US now.
More compelling than when it was all via the US. Problem is I now have a Sony Reader and Amazon have already lost considerable book sales from me. They should get back to what they are good at and sell DRM free in all formats (like they do for music) and stop trying to tie people in to restrictive standards and their own hardware.
Transferring accounts from .com to .co.uk was a doddle via kindle management page at Amazon.co.uk; Kindle (2) picked it up on next visit to storefront (though buying via a proper browser is still vastly preferable.
"Shipping at the end of the month", don't make me laugh, I preordered mine the other day and got an expected delivery date of October 6th. I have decided on a sony prs-600 instead
i just got a kindle dx in july, by then amazon claimed it was an "upgrade" version. now after only one month, amazon introduced an all-new version which will be able to read chinese, japanese and korean ~ i am totally disappointed when they say there's no firmware upgrading on this ~ this sucks ~ as far as i remember, iRex had done this before and they offered free upgrade of firmware to read other languages ~