Amazon has announced a new edition of their Kindle e-book reader that can now be used outside of the United States. Pre-orders for the "Kindle With International Wireless" are available now at $279 US and will ship starting on October the 19th. However, there's some confusion as any attempt to place a pre-order from Canada yields a disclaimer that warns the device cannot be shipped to a Canadian address, nor is Amazon offering any details as to how the device will operate within other countries, wether they have partnerships with wireless carriers, other than to say it has a 3G cellular data connection that can be used to access the Amazon online store from 100 countries and territories. This new edition has a higher price than the regular US edition Kindle, now selling for $259. International readers will be restricted to a selection of 200,000 English-language books. 

 

“We have millions of customers in countries all over the world who read English-language books,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Founder and CEO in a released statement. “Kindle enables these customers to think of a book and download it wirelessly in less than 60 seconds.”

In addition to books, the international edition will also offer access to 85 US and international newspapers and magazines including La Stampa (Italy), El País (Spain), El Universal (Mexico), O Globo (Brazil), The Daily Telegraph (UK), The New York Times (US), The International Herald Tribune, Le Monde (France), Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Germany) and The Washington Post (US).  

The news broke at Midnight Tuesday night, just moments before I wrote this, so I'll have to wait until the morning for clarity, but what appears to be the situation is that customers can purchase the internal edition Kindle while in the United States and then travel with it freely and still make purchases from the US store. The Canadian version of the Amazon Store, Amazon.ca doesn't seem to be carrying the Kindle, supporting the idea that this is only an offer good in the U.S. As I get more clarification on specific use in Canada, I'll post it. 

Central to how the International edition will work outside of the U.S. is its 3G wireless connection which is described as thus:"Readers living in or traveling to Kindle’s wireless coverage areas can wirelessly shop the Kindle Store, download books in less than 60 seconds, automatically receive newspaper and magazine subscriptions, and receive personal documents—all without a PC, Wi-Fi hot spot, or syncing. Customers who are not in the coverage area can quickly transfer content to Kindle over USB."<\p>

UPDATE: Amazon has confirmed that the Kindle will not be available to Canadian readers. Here's there statement on the matter:"We want to ship Kindle everywhere and we're working hard on it, but at this time we are not able to ship to Canada.We are making a portable reader with wireless access to a global catalogue of books available in over 100 countries around the world. This is an audacious first step, and we will continue to innovate on behalf of our customers and expand our offerings - we know that there will be other steps, but we're happy with where we are starting and we think our customers will be too."