Should I Kindle outside the U.S., or will I get burned?

August 9, 2008 11:15 PM

Any Non-U.S. users of Amazon's Kindle (or other E-reader) out there? Can you tell me how it's working out for you? I'm trying to decide whether to splurge for my birthday, and really don't want to invest that much money in a mistake.

Details:

I'm in Greece, where books in English are very expensive and the selection is minimal. My suboptimal option is to order books from Amazon UK, pay the extra shipping, and walk about a mile to the P.O. to stand in line and pick them up when they arrive. So, books are really "treats" for me, which is unfortunate since I'm an avid reader.

Kindle sounds like a pretty good solution, though paying a high price for technology/software that I won't be able to use (wireless connectivity, etc.) bugs me a lot, and I'm wondering if there is anything else about it that would make me rue the decision? Should I wait and hope they make some version that isn't U.S. only? Is there a more intelligent choice than Kindle in my circumstances?

If you live (or have travelled extensively with it, downloaded books, etc.) outside the U.S. and have experience, can you help guide me?

posted by taz to technology (14 answers total)

My boyfriend uses our Kindle in Armenia. I know 2 other people who use a Kindle here.

It is great to get the books, but just FYI - with a Euro plug adapter, the thing does NOT take a full charge!
posted by k8t at 11:41 PM on August 9, 2008

I'm going to throw my had in for the Sony reader. There are plenty of titles available via torrent and via the connect store, if you can't use the wireless functionality I think the form factor of the Sony outweighs the Kindles.
posted by iamabot at 11:49 PM on August 9, 2008

I'm going to throw my had in for the Sony reader. There are plenty of titles available via torrent and via the connect store, if you can't use the wireless functionality I think the form factor of the Sony outweighs the Kindles

The caveat is that for some formats (e.g PDFs) you have to manually resize them to fit on the Sony. Sometimes this reformatting messes up the document. I believe that Amazon will reformat docs for you, although this is no guarantee of the final quality. If you're going to read things in non-problematic formats and sizes, this may not be a problem for you.

I have an iRex iLiad, which is a great piece of hardware, and has a larger screen so you don't have to reformat. I'm very happy with it. BUT: the price is ridiculous, which may be enough to kill that as an option.

There was some mumbling abut a new generation of Kindles, so it may be worthwhile researching that and perhaps waiting a while.
posted by outlier at 2:37 AM on August 10, 2008

we have an iLiad in Glasgow, and it's great. You can get lots and lots of books online and it connects to a USB port on your comp and takes memory cards, USB sticks, etc. It also reads PDFs and many other free book formats, and is good for, erm, downloaded books too ;) It is spendy as hell tho but for the truly avid reader will pay for itself over time.
posted by By The Grace of God at 4:19 AM on August 10, 2008

I can't be much help, but I can tell you I'm in the same boat, sort of. I've been waiting on the e-ink book readers to come down in price, but it's going pretty slowly. Most seem to be hovering around the $250-$300 range, and for a cheap bastard like me they'd need to be closer to $100. And even that's a bit much. Hopefully production will hit a critical mass in the next year or two and the prices will drop dramatically.

I have a PSP, and with homebrew software use a bookreader on it. Its screen is about the same size as an iPhone, but without the e-ink, gets to be a strain on the eyes after a while.
posted by zardoz at 6:36 AM on August 10, 2008

I do all my reading on a Sony Clie PDA. It's a much handier form-factor, for me, than the Kindle or other dedicated e-readers. You can get about ten Clies on eBay for the price of a Kindle.

Disadvantages: because its screen is not e-ink, the Clie isn't as good to read in sunlight (but is great anywhere else), and it needs a recharge most days (I get about five hours of reading from a charge.)
posted by airplain at 8:38 AM on August 10, 2008

Rumor has it that a new Kindle 2.0 is in the works later this year. This may or may not affect your import decision, but (1) the rumored new models are supposed to be very different (improved?) over the current 1.0 model, and (2) if the rumor is true, 1.0 models should become quite cheap secondhand (e.g. eBay).

The logical thing for Amazon is to release it shortly before the winter holiday season, of course, but they're being tight-lipped about it otherwise.
posted by Ky at 11:08 AM on August 10, 2008

I am in Europe, too and would advise you against the kindle since it is expensive and you cannot buy kindle books from amazon. To do that you would need an American credit card, so amazon thinks that you are an American resident. There was a big article on the front of the economics section of my Sunday paper, today. Amazon might introduce the kindle to some European countrys soon. I will believe it, when I see it.

I would recommend the Sony PSR505. I bought from here (I just mention them because it is sometimes hard to find a reputable store that mails to Europe).
There are no tariffs on the reader shipping it to Germany, just the VAT equivalent. If the tariffs are somewhat harmonized EU wide, this might also be true for Greece.

I like the reader, since I find it good looking and robustly constructed. It is also the cheapest high quality e-ink device of that size that I could find (see the Iliad post for a much nicer, bigger and far more expensive reader). I find that e-ink is much better than using my cellphone as an ebook reader. Especially in sunshine, which Greece has aplenty, right? (Even though I still use the cellphone with readmaniac a lot when I am on he road.)

Since I updated the firmware, the reader can now reflow text in pdf documents, so reading those can finally be done comfortably without conversion hassle. It is not so good for reading technical material with lots of diagrams, but that is no wonder considering the screen size.

Calibre is a great free elibrary management and conversion software for the sony that runs on Windows, Linux and OS X.

There is a lot of information about all kinds of mobile reading devices to be found in the mobileread forums. (Sometimes I consider learning Russian. The most cutting edge ebook reader hacking seems to be done in that language. Mobileread is mostly in English.)

Buying ebooks is no problem,since the Microsoft Reader (.lit) format is essentially wide open now and there are nice converters for the sony (see calibre above). Fictionwiese, Diesel Ebooks and Harper Collins among many others, sell books in this format.

The amount of fiction is sufficient. If you are looking for a certain book, you will often have to buy the paper version. But if you like to find something new, ebooks are great. I even like the more limited selection because it forces me to try new genres and authors. Your mileage may vary though.
posted by mmkhd at 2:37 PM on August 10, 2008

I recommend against the Kindle simply because it's a single-function device that doesn't fit in your pocket and has features it sounds like you can't use in addition to some complications.

I've been reading e-books for years on a succession of Palm devices, and what I like best, aside from having a small library in my pocket, is that I can read anywhere since I always have it in my pocket. Waiting rooms, lunch breaks, in bed as I go to sleep, in bed as I'm waking up, anywhere else at home, airplanes, during conference calls *cough*, etc. - I read on it every day. You won't carry a Kindle with you at 7.5 x 5.3 unless you carry a backpack everywhere you go. If you only read at home I guess it's not an issue, but I used to only read at home or long trips until I went ebook.

There are tens of thousands of books available (or more?) and you can make your own using the DropBook utility. So if there is a free text available on Project Gutenberg, for example, you can create a Palm book out of it and load it up. A Palm device can also read PDF formatted ebooks. You can shop at ereader, fictionwise, ebookmall and elsewhere.

I don't have any problem with the screen. I was just sitting on the beach reading on it this morning. I was under an umbrella and probably would not have been able to read out there without it. That may be an advantage to e-ink, but I'm rarely in that kind of position.

People have always asked me how I can read on something so small and I tell them the same thing every time - once I'm in the story or the narrative or whatever, the medium becomes transparent - I don't realize I'm reading on something smaller than a book. Plus you can adjust fonts and font sizes.

Since it's a Palm, it can further justify its permanent place in your pocket with other great features like calendar, task lists, memos, office suite apps, every custom application you can think of, and of course (optionally) a phone, email client, and web browser. I figure, if you're going to carry a phone everywhere anyway, why not have it be your ebook reader too, especially if it's doing all those other Palm functions. If it just had a good 5mp camera instead of its dinky one I could ditch yet another device.

I happen to be a Palm user, but really I'm advocating for smartphone/PDA ebook reading. I've never used it, but there is a lot of content out there for Microsoft's ebook format and plenty of devices to handle it. There will even be a ported version of Palm's reader soon for the iPhone if you want more screen real estate and the coolness factor. If you don't want a Palm Treo or one of their other smartphones, you could get one of their non-phone PDAs like the TX, Z22, or Tungsten. The TX has loads of screen real estate and a nice bright screen, plus wi-fi.

Palm doesn't have any international restrictions that I'm aware of, so you wouldn't be hobbled in terms of features or content.

Good luck!
posted by Askr at 3:36 PM on August 10, 2008

If you are outside the US, you will need a hack to buy Kindle books.
posted by labnol at 12:06 PM on August 11, 2008

Update: Thanks for the responses, everyone! I did end up getting one, so I will let you know what I've found so far:

First of all, I had no idea how many free books are available in a Kindle-friendly format, or that can be converted to a format that Kindle can handle. If your reading tastes are varied, the incredible number of freebies is a great offset to the still-steep Kindle (or other good e-reader) price. I have now downloaded hundreds of books for my Kindle, literally - without spending another cent so far. I'm kind of blown away by this. I've gone from famine to feast in terms of reading material, and this was really my #1 goal. I was fed up with evaluating every book purchase as though I was making a fricking investment, and just really wanted to be able to read a lot of books.

But if you don't like classics, that bargain factor will be greatly diminished, and if you have somewhat esoteric preferences, you are probably going to have a problem even buying the books you want. I read everything, but I especially love science fiction and there are a lot of very specific (not-really-mainstream) books I would like to buy in this genre, but I'm finding that at this early stage of the game I might find one in 10 (rough guess) that is available to buy for Kindle. On the other hand, if you want to keep up with new releases (bestsellers) generally, you will probably be able to purchase most of them. And if you like the classics, well, go wild. I've already read probably at least three quarters of all books that show up on any "Greatest Books" list, and I still found tons of classic literature that I hadn't read yet.

I knew about the U.S.-only restrictions, but as has been pointed out, there are ways around this. I happen to have a U.S. credit card (I'm a U.S. citizen living in Greece), so I didn't have that problem purchasing the Kindle (and I had a friend from Greece visiting the U.S., so I had it delivered to him, and he brought it back with him) - and if we want to use our Greek card to buy books I'll buy myself gift certificates. Obviously, this is not optimal, but I'm guessing it will be some time before international versions roll out, and even then it's not likely that Greece will be on the list - we don't have an Amazon International site, and when they go global I'm assuming they are going to stick with the countries that already have an Amazon presence. So for me, there wasn't much hope for wait-and-see.

As to the device itself, I like it about 90%. The readability is very good, the feel is good, and the transition from paper books to e-reader is not a big deal for me. I've been able to convert pretty much any e-reader/html/pdf format I've come across to Kindle-friendly with the use of Mobipocket Creator and convertlit gui free software, and figuring out how everything works in terms of the Kindle environment was swift and simple. My only problem with the Kindle (and I believe this has been mentioned in reviews) is that it's difficult to handle it without accidentally pressing the "next page" "previous page" bars. If I'm sitting up, with the Kindle in my lap, it's not as much of a problem, but I read every night in bed, and here it is very bothersome. It remains to be seen if this is something that will become easier with body memory (my hands/fingers will "learn" where they can safely rest/support the device), but if this is an issue that will be addressed in a newer version, one might want to wait for that fix. A minor quibble is the book cover that comes with it; again, sitting up straight and dealing with it isn't much of a problem, but trying to use it while lying down is messy; I hoped it would make it easier to hold the device without constantly forwarding the page, but it slips and slides out of the cover. Or maybe I just haven't managed to get the hang of it.

Also, very important: so far as I can tell, there is no international language support for the Kindle. Bad. (Bad Amazon!) Something to keep in mind if you are hoping to read in more than one language.

SO. My verdict so far: I'm very glad I got it, I mostly love it, but other international users in countries that already have an Amazon may have more reason to wait and see if international Kindles become available. The Whispernet thing would be wicked cool, but I don't see it happening here for a long time, if ever. Also might be worth seeing if the next/previous bars get modified in newer versions.

Finally, any Kindle users out there who want to compare notes, talk, etc. - memail me!
posted by taz at 10:20 PM on August 20, 2008

Finally, any Kindle E-Reader users out there who want to compare notes, talk, etc. - memail me!

ftfm.
posted by taz at 10:22 PM on August 20, 2008

Thanks for the update. As for not finding the books you like, and as you mentioned SF specifically, I suggest you check out torrent sites. If you're so inclined. There are tons of books out there you can download, a lot of them oddly in .LIT format, but I believe those can be easily converted for the Kindle. FYI.
posted by zardoz at 11:19 PM on August 20, 2008

Further update... Gah, I love it. I can't imagine now not having one (a decent E-Reader, at least, if not a Kindle), and for me, in my situation, it's been the best thing in personal technology since broadband internet. So happyhappyjoyjoy here.

But, the problem with the next page/previous page bars? Really a pain in the ass. It's pretty much impossible not to accidentally hit those bars, even after you get used to it - so you really do spend a lot of time backing up or forwarding to where you are supposed to be (I can't believe that product testing didn't address this problem) and at least for me, my hands eventually begin to feel a little pins-and-needly just from trying to hold it in such a way as to avoid this. Crazy, crazy design flaw that could have been partially addressed by allowing the user to program the available bars, or at least turn them off and on individually - preferably both.

So, unless you just can't wait, I recommend checking the next edition (rumors say November?) to see if this has been fixed. What did the testers do? Sit it on a table with their hands in their laps and then just poke at the "next" and "prev" bars? I'm really wondering.
posted by taz at 1:48 AM on August 29, 2008