One of the biggest selling points, which surprisingly Amazon hasn’t tapped into, is Kindle’s greenness. It’s one of the best gadgets for people who want to help save the environment and save money in the process. It’s true that charging $9.99 for e-books is a bit much, but e-books can still save you a bit of money. But when it comes to greenness, e-books are the winner by a long mile. A recent study by CleanTech Group assesses that Amazon Kindle can help reduce carbon dioxide emission by 10.9 tons by 2012. It’d be interesting to see whether publishers will take the chance and scale back their book production. But overall it’s a positive trend.

The question at this point is whether customers are purchasing Amazon Kindle for its “eco-friendly-ness.” Does it even matter at this point? It’s a tough question to tackle. In one hand, it’d be great if people cared more about the environment around them and bought Amazon Kindle not only for its cost savings but also for its greenness. But e-b00k readers are a good example of eco-friendly gadgets that are useful and don’t make you change your lifestyle dramatically. So regardless of what people’s intentions are when buying a Kindle, it still going to help the environment in the long run.

Amazon still needs to work on bringing down the costs of e-books. As much as we love e-books, paying $9.99 for a copy that you can’t share or sell is a bit too much. And since you don’t really own your e-books as Amazon showed with its recent actions, e-book publishers and content distributors need to work on a way to reduce costs and provide e-content in a more affordable manner without taking away our privacy. The e-book market is growing fast, and some of the issues that consumers are facing today is to be expected. But one would hope that things change for the better as more people switch to e-books from regular books.

Your take: did you buy your Kindle to help the environment? How did its “greenness” factor in your buying decision?

So you finally decided to part ways with $360 of your hard earned money and buy an Amazon Kindle. Now what? Do you know where to find content for your Kindle? Even though there are 250,000 books available in Amazon Kindle store, people still complain about not having access to more content for the Kindle platform. In reality, there are plenty of places you can find books for your gadget.

Here are a few places that you can find content online (not counting P2P networks):

• AZW: the chances are you have already tried the Kindle store and are looking for another source of AZW content for your Kindle. You can always try manybooks.net for more books. They have over 20K titles for the platform and worth a try.
• PDF: there are many place you can find PDF works on the Web. I am not going to suggest any P2P methods here (torrents) as there are plenty of legal ways to get content for your gadget:
  • http://www.pdfbooks.co.za
  • http://www.worldlibrary.net
  • http://www.wowio.com
  • http://www.zinepal.com
  • http://www.munseys.com
• MOBI: I am not a fan of MOBI books, but these books are compatible with Kindle 1.0 and Kindle 2.0. Here are a few places to find .MOBI books:
  • http://www.fictionwise.com
  • http://www.mobipocket.com
  • http://www.freekindlebooks.org
• Text: you’d be surprised how many interesting books you find in this format. Here are a few places you can look for .TXT books:
  • http://www.fictionpress.com
  • http://www.gutenberg.org
• PRC: finally, if you are still looking for content after trying the above sites, you may want to look at:
  • http://www.webscriptions.net
  • http://www.mnybks.net
• Audio: it’s surprising how many people don’t use their Kindle for audio-books. But there are lots of good titles available for your Kindle:
  • http://www.audible.com
  • http://www.simplyaudiobooks.com
  • http://www.audiobooks.com/

There you have it. There are lots of other places that you can look for Kindle content, but the above sites are those that I have used in the past and have decent books available for download. Having said that, if you know any other place for Kindle content, please comment below.

A few months ago, I suggested that Barack Obama should take his oath on an electronic bible on Kindle. While that did not happen and sounded crazy at the time, it seems religious books are finally finding their way to the Kindle platform. A search for the word “bible” produced over 160 results. It seems the religious folks are realizing the importance of getting their feet wet early on with Kindle.

It would be nice to see people picking up holy books for their Kindle. But there is a good chance they won’t. And if they do, you don’t expect them to take their Kindles to a church. There is just something mystical about a soft/hard cover holy book, and it would be difficult to change people’s minds about it.   It’d be nice to see Pope Benedict pick up a Kindle, but that is not going to happen either.

The Kindle can be great for teaching kids about religion. It’s a great educational tool. I just can’t imagine church-goers dropping their holy books and switch to Kindle anytime soon.

Your thoughts: will Kindle ever catch fire in this market?

Kindle is a cool gadget. I think people have realized that after it has been around for over a year. But it’s really more than a gadget. It’s a game changer. Have you ever bought a book on Amazon and felt that you could write a better book on the same topic? But what are the chances that you can write a book and have Amazon sell it for you? The chances are very good in the Kindle era.

Kindle has somewhat leveled the playing field for independent writers and publishers. The Kindle platform allows you to create and sell your own books on Amazon, as long as you know your way around the technicalities. Publish Your Book On The Amazon Kindle is just the book to help you publish your book in a flash.

The book is written for folks who want to learn their way around Amazon’s DTP platform. DTP has a long way to go to reach its full potential, but even in beta phase, it works in a decent fashion. The book also covers how you can use mobipocket to get your book to the Kindle store. What I love about this book is not only great content but also the resources provided that you can refer to get things done fast. There are many pitfalls and misconceptions along the way, and I rather know them beforehand. Don’t you?

My favorite part of this book was the coverge of blogging for the Kindle platform. Have you wondered what it takes to make your blog available to Kindle holders through the Kindle store? You’ll learn all about it in this book.

Publishing books on Kindle is a wonderful achievement. And it is not really that hard as long as you know what you are doing. By knowing what to look out for when writing your Kindle book, you can save yourself a lot of headache and get published fast!

Get your copy here.

As a Kindle owner, I have enjoyed having the ability to buy books and have them delivered to my Kindle in less than 30 seconds. Unfortunately, Amazon has not yet released all paperback books to the Kindle, so I thought I’d create the top 5 books I want to see on Kindle. Here they are:

Great book for any start-up owner. Not yet released to the Kindle, but I am hopeful.

Now is gone is a must read marketing book. Unfortunately, it’s not released to Kindle store yet.

Must read social media book. Haven’t seen it in the Kindle store yet.

Classic businss book for companies which want to improve their processes and accelerate their growth.

This may sound corny. But I like Obama books. They are full of hope and inspirational messages. This guy can talk!

Your Take

What are your favorite books that are not on Kindle? I could’ve picked some classic books that I’d like to see on Kindle, but at the end of the day, I don’t read classic books too much these days. But which books would you like to see in the Kindle store?

So I was checking Amazon today, and I probably saw 30 or more books about iPhone 3G and how to use iPhone 3G to do all kinds of things. So I thought, what about Kindle? Why doesn’t Kindle get any love from publishers? Well, it seems there is a book on Kindle (though in the Kindle edition). The books is called “the Amazon Kindle FAQ.” Here are the topics covered:

• Kindle Basics, From A to Z
• Whispernet FAQs
• All about the Experience with E-Ink
• Traveling With Kindle
• Kindle, battery, and energy consumption
• How to handle Multiple Kindles
• Where do I get content?
• Kindle Shortcuts and hidden features

Now this is all not bad at all, but I wish it was for free. I mean Amazon should have one of these babies out for a cent or two.