Why Kindle?

Buying a Kindle

The Kindle Books website only sells the books themselves, not the readers.

I believe the best place to buy an eReader is from Amazon. To our knowledge there is no official South African agent (actually I am not sure Amazon appoint agents anywhere), so local readers are bought retail by middlemen, or are actually second-hand.

Amazon won’t use the SA postal service because so many items disappear in transit (especially DVDs), so they use a courier. Delivery prices can therefore be high. I don’t know if that has changed more recently.

• Buying the right Kindle

You don't have to have a Kindle - you have options

I am not going to try to sell you a Kindle. I love mine, but even in South Africa there are other options including iPads, smartphones and of course computers.

To help make your decision, here is a list of the top international eReaders.

• Barnes & Noble Nook
• Kobo eReader
• Literati Reader
• Pandigital Novel
• PocketBook Pro
• Sony Reader
• iPad

Hanvon eReader & Tablet - New!

We are in discussion with a distributor to see if Kindle Books can import these as at reasonable price. We like the Hanvon because it is also electronic ink, giving it a 4 week battery life. It is 8 inches in diameter  (2 inches larger than the standard Kindle) and I think that extra size is necessary for more complex text books.

With so many options, why did I choose the Kindle?

Convenient access to books

Amazon is simply the easiest, safest way to buy large numbers of books at a price that is cheaper than anything I can find in a local book store. You can trust them with your credit card, and the Kindle user experience is amazing.

Use your Kindle to go online to the store, do a search, choose your book and in 5 minutes it's on your Kindle ready to read. This of course is providing that you have their wireless 3G connection. Despite the additional $50, the Kindle 3G connection is a requirement in South Africa. In first world countries you have free wireless access from restaurants and coffee shops, airports, stations and often just walking down the street. Here in South Africa the Kindle 3G connection will also give you access to websites like gmail or googlemaps from just about anywhere in the world. For life. That is worth $50!

For Kindles without wi-fi (or for books downloaded from this website) you download the Kindle book onto your desktop and drag it to the Kindle via the USB cable.

Many readers love to read on the colour iPad, but Apple's iBook store has a limited range.However books you buy for a Kindle will work on an iPad, iPhone or Mac. The reverse is not true. Barnes & Noble's Nook is amazing, but it's difficult to buy here in South Africa.

The Sony is elegant and technologically advanced, but Sony has a poor record for playing nicely with other brands. (My Sony Camcorder is a good example - it has a proprietary format that can't be understood by other software, including my DVD player!)

The primary "gap" in the Amazon range as far as I am concerned is South African books - they have most of the local books that are published, but let's be honest that isn't a large selection. Hence this website. Our goal is to build a website to augment the "official" published Kindle books, with books about South African situations by South African authors in English or Afrikaans.

Practicality

Smartphones are convenient because they are always with you, but they are not that easy to read. iPads are a great full colour experience, but unless you travel with one anyway ... whew. On both, the battery life is a real issue.

The Kindle offers an all round experience

• It's a sensible size - much the same page size as a paperback although only millimetres thick. You can carry it anywhere without having to work out whether it will fit in your handbag, it will. Buy a leather cover, it will stop it getting scratched.
• You can see the graphics, although they are black and white. Most novels don't have a lot of graphics.
• You can read in bright or low light. LCD screens are difficult to read in certain light sources (everything shines) and impossible to read in bright sunlight. Electronic ink is easy on your eyes, with just the right contrast.
• You can read PDFs - I receive a great many PDF's for work, and they travel with me on my Kindle. Almost all documents that have complex formatting and diagrams can be converted to a PDF.
• The battery lasts forever. OK, not forever but mine lasts about a month.

When you want to play games or browse the internet, use your iPad until you are out of power. Then turn on your Kindle and read. No matter how long the flight, you won't be left looking for a South African plug point. And you charge via a USB so you can always link in to someone's computer without a transformer.

The Kindle uses electronic ink rather than an LCD screen which is why it uses almost no power no matter how long it is left on.

Kindle supports professional writers and authors

Amazon's approach supports and encourages writers and authors, it doesn't undercut them.

There are many more free books on other formats. From a reader's point of view that is great! Many are of course thinly disguised sales literature, most are poorly formatted but some are good - the kind of books you would love to read for nothing.

What Kindle has done is set up a conversion that isn't that easy to steal. That is a negative for the reader who wants to pass on his free books. But in if you think about it, free books are not necessarily a good thing for anyone who loves books.

If you are a writer, and you want to make a living as an author, there is no good reason to devote blood, toil, sweat and tears to creating a great book, only to make one sale. The buyer then lends or resells your book for nothing. Physical books can be loaned to one person at a time. An electronic book can be downloaded a million times.

One reader can steal the occasional book and never affect the industry. Unfortunately everyone on the internet downloading everything for free means a great many starving authors! Soon, the only writing you will find will be that sponsored by advertisers or someone trying to use the book to sell ideology, religion or product. Not a happy future for us readers.

Amazon allows writers to publish their work in a safe format, on their store. They take a small percentage to handle the distribution, but as much as 75% goes to the author. No middlemen. This is GREAT for the industry. Authors decide on their price and get paid - they have control over the entire process. Amazon assists them with marketing and distribution. Amazon is kind to authors.

Kindle Books works with Amazon, and books that do well here can be published on Amazon as they are already in the right format. Kindle Books South Africa is a proving ground for new authors, who can then publish to Amazon for international sales. Kindle Books can assist with this process.