Kindle comes to Canada, finally

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This article was published 18/11/2009 (6032 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TORONTO — Canadians can finally discover for themselves whether Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader is worth all the hype and the more than $300 it will cost to have one shipped north.

Amazon.com announced Tuesday the popular device — which is lighter than the average paperback, less than a centimetre thick and has a 15-centimetre screen — is now available in Canada, about six weeks after it launched internationally in more than 100 other countries.

It has been available in the United States for two years.

Amazon remained tight-lipped about why the Kindle took so long to come to Canada but said it was happy to finally sell it to Canadians, who were very vocal about their desire to buy it.

“We’ve heard a lot from Canadian customers that they want a Kindle and they’re excited about it,” said Jay Marine, director of product management.

“We’ve obviously got a large Canadian business with passionate readers so we’re really excited to make it available.”

Amazon is selling the Kindle and its ebooks in U.S. dollars, which Marine said helped expedite the sale of the device in Canada. He wouldn’t say if Amazon is moving toward selling the Kindle in Canadian funds.

But the high value of the loonie makes the US$259 price a good deal for Canadian shoppers, who have often complained about products being much more expensive in Canada compared to American stores.

A reader in Toronto considering a Kindle will pay about $330 after accounting for currency conversion, shipping, and an import fee of almost US$34, which includes taxes and duties.

Kindle’s biggest competition in Canada is the Sony Reader Touch, which has the same screen size but a smaller hard drive. It sells for $300 in the United States and $400 in Canada, plus taxes.

There are more than 300,000 ebooks currently available to Canadians through Amazon, with each title downloading wirelessly in about a minute. Bestsellers will typically be available for US$11.99 or less, Amazon said.

The Kindle’s two gigabytes of storage can hold up to 1,500 books and can also store and open other file formats including PDFs, Microsoft Word documents, MP3s and podcasts.

Kindle’s ebook selection still has some glaring holes in it, but Marine said Amazon is working on adding more titles.

Scotiabank Giller Prize-winner Linden MacIntyre’s The Bishop’s Man and Kate Pullinger’s The Mistress of Nothing, the winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction, are not available to Kindle owners.

— The Canadian Press