That’s correct, but with one very big clarification - Amazon sold more Kindle books than print books on Christmas day this year. That’s because of two factors:
Most folks don’t purchase print books on Christmas day. They’re mostly still unwrapping and reading the print books they got for Christmas.
On the other hand, virtually everyone who got a Kindle for Christmas unwrapped it on Christmas day - and promptly logged onto the online Amazon store and purchased an e-book for it as a test. That’s certainly true in the case of my wife and her new Kindle.
It has no problem reading them, assuming they’re in a format that the Kindle can read. If you e-mail them to Amazon they’ll transfer them to the Kindle over the wireless connection for a fee (it used to be 10 cents, I don’t know if it’s 10 or 15 cents now), or you can copy it onto the Kindle directly via the USB connection or the SD card (for the original Kindle).
No, not really. I mean, by default, maybe, but there’s absolutely no problem copying the files off the Kindle to your computer – or doing what I do and downloading the book from Amazon to the computer FIRST and loading them to the Kindle from there. (I only turn on the wireless feature if I’m out and about and want to buy a book, so usually it’s easier for me to load it from the computer than to wait a couple minutes for the Kindle to receive it.)
It’s a system that gives you more options, not fewer, than other book readers.
ETA: And now, with the Kindle for PC app and the upcoming Kindle for Mac app, you can read your books on a normal computer also.
I didn’t know you could do that with the Kindle. Thanks for the information. That approach seems a little smarter to me.
I know cloud computing is the wave of the future, but can’t help but be reminded of how often work comes to screeching halt at my job because certain files are only available on network storage and the network is down. Or, how occasionally I need to pay bills online and the bank is offline. So, I still like the idea of having my own backup copy of music and books.
Yeah, exactly, I don’t think we’re quite there yet. Heck, I don’t trust anybody to be available all the time, even a big place like Amazon, which is why I only buy files that are either DRM-free or can have the DRM stripped. Fortunately, Amazon’s ebooks qualify. I just wish somebody would figure out how to allow proper DRM-free backup of Sony’s books too…
I didn’t see an answer to the OP’s question about the keyboard. It’s for searching the Amazon bookstore. Type in an author or title and Amazon shows you what they have available. My wife and I both have one and love them. You can now flip the page to horizontal, although I don’t know what the advantage would be; perhaps for better graphics display. One word of advice: if you buy a Kindle or any other reader, make sure you also buy a carrier for it that has a bit of padding. First time you get up too quickly and dump it on the floor without protection will likely put you back in the market for a new reader.
I don’t know the answer to your specific question, but remember: you can load your reader with up to 1500 (or whatever) books before you go. That would probably be enough to tide you over so that you wouldn’t need to buy additonal books while traveling.
The price of content may very well rise. But Project Gutenberg provides lots of free material. And Amazon has a large selection of out-of-copyright books at no charge or sometimes for a measly buck.
