[LINK] The Amazon Kimble e-book

[Scott Howard]

On Sun, Jul 6, 2008 at 7:37 AM, <stephen at melbpc.org.au> wrote:

> It will be nice to have the Kimble here in Australia, though imagine what
> Telstra etc will charge Amazon for the mobile-phone/Internet connectivity.
> In America, Amazon includes the net connection in the purchase price haha!
>
> An expensive arrangement (always-on, often-download) here one would think,
> and, unlikely to be included in the purchase price whan it gets here, yes?
>

It's the Kindle which is "always-on", not the Internet connection (even
that's debatable, as the whole point of e-paper is that it doesn't need
power to hold an image).

With the exception of web browsing (which I'm sure could be disabled)
everything you download over-the-air on the Kindle is chargeable - even if
it's just downloading your own PDF.  I'm sure there's no end of
possibilities there for any telco to come up with a viable charging
structure.

The bigger issue is going to be that the distribution rights for the books
are frequently going to be very different in Australian than in the US, and
in many cases Amazon are going to have to completely re-negotiate the rights
for each individual country.  Given the current demand for Kindle's in the
US which they can't keep up with, I suspect that other countries like
Australia are a fair way down their list of priorities...

  Scott.