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Our Bureau

New Delhi, Oct. 21 Amazon.com Inc.’s digital reading device ‘Kindle’ is now available in India.

‘Kindle’ wirelessly downloads books, magazines, newspapers and personal documents to a 6-inch electronic paper display that almost looks and reads like paper.

The company said that the product started shipping to India this week. It is being made available in over 100 countries. ‘Kindle’ was launched in the US nearly two years ago.

Book lovers eyeing a ‘Kindle’ will have to shell out $279 to order one on the Amazon.com Web site (the price excludes shipping and handling charges and local taxes). Shipping will take between two and seven days for India.

Users then have to create an account and pay for individual books they select from Amazon’s Kindle store, which has for Indian audiences a repository of 2.80 lakh English language books. The store also hosts books by Indian authors.

Each Kindle can store up to 1,500 books (2 GB memory) and multiple Kindles can share a single account. At one time, as many as six Kindle devices can share one book. “Once an account is opened, the user can directly download a book, without the help of any other computing device,” said Ms Laura Porco, Director, Kindle Books. A book can be downloaded wirelessly in less than 60 seconds, claims the company. Kindle books are automatically backed up by Amazon, so customers can re-download titles in their library.

Over 1,000 different rights-holders now have books available in the Kindle Store, including leading publishers such as Atlantic Books, Bloomsbury, Canongate, Faber and Faber, Hachette, Harlequin, HarperCollins, Lonely Planet, Penguin, Profile Books, Quercus, Simon & Schuster and Wiley. Over 85 US and international newspapers and magazines are also available for single purchase or subscription, although the list does not yet include an Indian daily or weekly.

Kindle’s e-paper display sips battery power so users can read for over two weeks with wireless turned off and up to four days on a single charge with wireless on. Kindle has features such as read-to-me, bookmarks, notes, and instant dictionary look-up, among others.

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