Yesterday, we received an e-mail from Amazon about its new Kindle store. At first, we discarded the e-mail as it looked awfully like a spam e-mail. As it turned out, the story discussed in the e-mail was true. Amazon has indeed launched a new Kindle store for UK customers. Kindle books can be purchased for as low as £1.96, which seems like a good deal.

It’s interesting to note that the books in UK Kindle store turn out to be a bit cheaper than the very same ones in the U.S. store (using the latest exchange rate). The Kindle store for UK does seem to recognize customers’ location based on their IP (which is why we received the message in the above screen-shot).

Amazon Kindle has been around for a while now. While we shouldn’t forget about Sony and other companies that paved the way for Amazon, we must give credit where it is due. Amazon has single-handedly brought some new life to the e-book market. As popular as Kindle has been, it has taken Amazon a few years to finally make the device mainstream. For the first few months or the first year, a lot of people didn’t even bother to check Kindle. Fast forward a couple of years, and Amazon has already a huge feat by selling more e-books than paper books on Christmas day.

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.

If you haven’t been paying attention, Amazon seems to be juggling between multiple strategies to make the Kindle store more relevant. The Kindle store is great if you are a heavy Kindle user, but at the end of the day most people search for books on the normal Amazon store and not the Kindle store. Amazon seems to be introducing Kindle books sooner or at the same time (as they are doing with Brisingr) as paperback books to encourage people to pick them up from the Kindle store. I think releasing books earlier to the Kindle platform would be brilliant strategy to boost Kindle sales. After all, if you can skip the shipping process, and get books 2 weeks earlier than you would at bookstores, all of a sudden Kindle doesn’t look that expensive. We shall see if this strategy works out for Amazon but it’s certainly not that risky.

What are your thoughts on this strategy? Would you consider buying a Kindle if it meant you getting books 2-3 weeks earlier than most people?

A few days ago I was browsing through Amazon’s selection of books to figure out which books are the hottest sellers out there. To my surprise, I found a couple of books who were being sold for about $9 as paperback but $9.99 in the Kindle store. Now the problem with that is why would anyone want to buy the Kindle edition for more? I am actually interested to see if anyone of you guys would consider paying more for Kindle books, but to me that would be unreasonable.

Today I checked the same books, and it seems that Amazon is now matches the prices of both editions for these books. While still unreasonable, at least Amazon is paying attention. In my book, Amazon Kindle books should be prices at least 20-30% lower than their paperbook counterparts. Some say that all books should be in $0.99 – $4.99 range, but I can’t see that happening for $100 college books.

I am interested to hear your thoughts on this. Should Amazon charge the same for a paperback book and its Kindle version? Would you consider paying more for Kindle books?