I have been somewhat surprised about how slowly the Kindle is taking off in South Africa. Apple seems sure that their iPad is going to challenge it, but I am not so sure that that will be the case. Amazon’s product was launched first, it is most probably better and easier to read than a colour device and it has the resources of Amazon’s retail expertise and supply. I don’t think that people realise that firstly it holds thousands of books, secondly they get delivered to you wirelessly over the cellular network of whatever country you are in and thirdly, wherever you can get a cell phone signal, you can order a book.

In other words, I have literally been sailing in the ocean, past a country, and have ordered a Kindle version of a book, simply by clicking on it and had that book download to my Kindle within a minute. There are more than 400 000 titles to choose from in South Africa (600 000 for Americans), at the time of writing this, and essentially every best-selling book has a Kindle version which means, wherever I am, I have a mobile bookstore that sells me books at an average price of approximately $10 or $12 within 60 seconds. 

I can highlight passages that are important to me, to quote at a later stage, and I can also see, which is quite interesting, which passages in the book have been highlighted by the most readers so far. If I have a Kindle nearby, and remember I don’t have to pay anything for its wireless capabilities as that is built into the price of the book, I will never be short of anything to read and I won’t be at a disadvantage if I am in a country where they don’t sell many English magazines or books or indeed in South Africa, where I might have to wait 6 weeks for Exclusive Books to import the book for me in the first place. Amazon has released a new, cheaper version of the Kindle, and it is only a matter of time, I am sure, before there is a version available that costs less than $100 at which time, hopefully, they will take off. I say “take off” – it is a number one selling device on Amazon for two consecutive years now already, but I am really referring to taking off in South Africa.