Kindle 3 Availability: Dates, Colors. UK Kindle Store Orders. UK E-book prices.

SHIPPING DATES
Updated 8/13/10 for current-order shipping date.
The Amazon Kindle Community forums had many posts Friday about new Kindle 3 shipping dates that are as late as October showing up on their Amazon accounts.  Obviously there was some consternation over that (a customer service representative said that they received many phone calls and emails about this today), but then after a few hours, the varied dates and date-ranges seen for Kindle Open Orders were gone, replaced by the statement:

    "We'll notify you via e-mail when we have an estimated delivery date for this item."

A few hours later, the Kindle product pages for both the U.S. Amazon and UK Amazon stores have been quoting the same expected ship date:

  US/International (except UK):
    "Order now to reserve your place in line. Orders are prioritized on a first come, first served basis.  Orders placed today are expected to ship on or before September 10th. "

  UK Only:
    "Orders are prioritised on a first-come, first-served basis.  Orders placed today are expected to dispatch on or before September 10."

Since it's not logical that orders placed much earlier than today would be shipped as late as October while those placed today would ship in early September, it must have been a (quite a) glitch.

COLORS - Non USA
Many in the Kindle forums have been writing that they want the White Kindle 3 rather than the Graphite one, but those ordering from outside the U.S. are reporting that only the Graphite one is available to them.

KINDLE DX IN THE UK
 ALSO, Amazon UK is, as of today, not showing the Kindle DX as buyable from the UK store.   So, at least for now, UK residents will still need to purchase those from Amazon U.S. for some reason.

KINDLE BOOK PRICING IN THE UK
After over half a year of having to pay $2 more for each Kindle book, UK customers are now ironically in the position of getting these e-books at a considerably lower price than in the U.S.  That should help make up for the much higher pricing for periodicals during the last half-year.  Blogs will now be available and I imagine photographs will be included in the newspapers and magazine subscriptions.

The UK Kindle product-page says:
  "We check hundreds of prices every day to make sure our prices are the lowest of any e-bookstore in the UK."

  Why the lower e-book pricing there?  The idea of the Apple Agency pricing arrangements did not go over well in the UK where they frown on anything that appears to be price-fixing.

 Penguin gave Amazon a bad time recently over e-book pricing and availability.  They disallowed selling of the new Penguin e-books until Amazon agreed to the Apple Agency arrangement, then Jeff Bezos lowered the price of Penguin's new hardcover books to compensate as hardcovers are not on the Agency plan), and customers became impatient.  Penguin has changed its tune during the launch of Amazon UK.  The Guardian headline and subtitle for July 29:

' Penguin boss has no problem with ebooks
  John Makinson says that if people want to read using new technology, that's what publishers must give them '

In the body of the article Makiknson also says,

" It does redefine what we do as publishers and I feel, compared with most of my counterparts, more optimistic about what this means for us...Of course there are issues around copyright protection and there are worries around pricing and around piracy, royalty rates and so on, but there is also this huge opportunity to do more as publishers. "

Yes, there is.  In the U.S., he, the other Big5, and Apple joined to raise the e-book prices considerably. :-)  Digital media rights are convoluted.  While we can buy hardcover books from other countries over the Net, there are, as many have found, loads of publisher restrictions on digital books.   So, U.S. residents may not be, as it stands now, able to just buy books from Amazon UK, it seems.  Not even for an additional $2 per book cost that non-U.S. customers buying Kindle books (w/authorization from publishers) paid to get them from Amazon-US.  I hope I'm mistaken.
  He seems mostly entranced with the potential of digital books for which video can be added.  While I enjoy "enhanced" books, I'd love it if Makinson works to price e-books for the text, and offer the fancier editions at higher prices for whatever added labor and rights-buying will go into those.

Congratulations to the UK folks!

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