Kindle Paperwhite and the Kindle Owners' Lending Library going to the UK, France, Germany. Paperwhite for Italy+Spain also. Kindle hardware is sold at Amazon's cost, Jeff Bezos tells BBC News.

Amazon Kindle Paperwhite on its way to Europe, along with Kindle Owners' Lending Library

Jeff Bezos, in a video'd cafe interview with BBC News yesterday, said that "Basically, we sell the hardware at our cost, so it's break-even on hardware" and, as we learned Sept. 6 at their announcements of the new Kindle line, their plan is to make money through sales of books and other content subsequently bought by Kindle owners.

  Apple,  CNet's Dan Farber writes, "reportedly makes around a 40 percent margin on its WiFi-based iPad..."

Amazon is releasing the Paperwhite in the UK, along with the Kindle Fire on Oct 25 and has been promoting its PRIME subscription program, long available in the U.S. and now extended also to customers in France, Germany, and the UK on November 22.  I saw that the Paperwhite will be released in Spain and Italy too, but nothing has been said about the Prime program in those countries yet.  In the UK, the annual subscription to Prime will be £49.

The Kindle Owners' Lending Library - for Europe soon
The Kindle Owners' Lending Library (KOLL) is coming to the UK, Germany and France in late October.  As in the U.S., Prime members who own a Kindle device can borrow one Kindle book per calendar month for free, with no waiting lines or due dates.  This is on top of the basic Prime feature of free 2-day shipping (1-day in the UK), which in parts of Europe will tend to be for purchases of Euro 15 or more.  Thanks to commenter David Williams for the info on 1-day free shipment for the UK.

PaidContent reports:

' Amazon opened it up to self-published authors in December 2011 through a program called KDP Select, and the library now contains over 200,000 titles, nearly all of them self-published.  Authors are paid out of a fund each time their ebook is borrowed. (In exchange for including books in the KOLL, self-published authors must sell them exclusively through Kindle for a period of at least 90 days.) All seven Harry Potter ebooks are also available through the KOLL in English, French, Italian, German and Spanish.

In the press release announcing the expansion to Europe, Amazon said it is increasing the pool of money that self-published authors are paid from to $700,000 for October, from $600,000 last month, and “a larger increase anticipated in November.” The company says “in September, authors earned $2.29 per borrow, which is more than many KDP books earn per sale.” (Of course, not all books are borrowed even one time.) '

Why we see Amazon 'Special Offers" and "Customers also purchased"
The "also purchased" recommendations were added lately to Kindle Fire HD and Paperwhite, in connection with Kindlers' favorite genres or authors showing in most-recent reading on the Carousel or book listing.  There will be an option to not show these, in the next Kindle software updates, but some enjoy seeing them.  Barnes and Noble has had "You might also like" on the lower half of its Nook Touch for over a year but have managed to market it as an e-reader "with no ads."

redOrbit points out:

' Considering that Amazon makes little or no money on sales of hardware devices, having customers purchase content is critically important.

Bezos said that part of the reason Amazon’s break-even hardware strategy works is because customers’ desire for media grows significantly once they own an Amazon device.

“What we find is that when people buy a Kindle they read four times as much as they did before they bought the Kindle.”

“But they don’t stop buying paper books. Kindle owners read four times as much, but they continue to buy both types of books.”

Amazon hopes its devices will also help generate sales of non-media products sold online, since customers who purchase Amazon Prime receive faster delivery, at no additional cost, of products purchased from its warehouses.

Although the expedited delivery adds to shipping costs, evidence has shown that subscribers end up spending more overall and are less likely to comparison shop at rival online retailers. '

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