Using a Kindle in China...

So, I read a lot.  English books in China, from my experience, are expensive and (at least what I want.) few and far between.   

I've recently come into the option of getting my very own Kindle, a device a roommate of mine had back in the States and I was enamored with.  The thing claims it has free internet anywhere in the world, but I'm skeptical about that... even if it's supposed to be satellite based. 

I know you can download books onto your PC and transfer via USB, so that's not exactly a dealbreaker.  I am curious if Amazon will have some sort of region block that would stop me from getting books without a vpn or something running to act like I'm in the US.

Anyone have any experience with e-books in China?

 

I have no problem downloading e-books in several formats but not sure Kindle will accept the formats. I use fictionwise.com and Free-eBooks.net.  Works on my Zune...

Kindle accepts like 400 different formats, so that's not an issue.

It'll be free  , so I don't really mind getting it just for the fancy e-ink screen... especially since I'll be back in the 'States at some point.

While the Kindle does support international downloads using AT&T's GSM service, it is not available everywhere, and it is not free. In those countries where the international service is available, it will cost $1.99 (USD) per download. While the service is widespread in Europe, is not available in China. What I do, since I'm currently working in China, is download the book via the internet and then copy it to my Kindle. All of this is explained in the Amazon Kindle web site.

If you try to buy books for the kindle in China, I've noticed they block Chinese IP addresses from purchasing.

If you go into the Kindle store you get this message:

Important Message
Kindle Titles are not available in China.

But as was said before, you can download in other formats and upload them to your Kindle.

Unfortunately, with the exception of the .txt format, I have found that other formats and, in particular, PDF, do not go down well with the Kindle. It's really hit or miss, depending on how the original PDF was formatted. Not sure how formats besides PDF might look once uploaded but PDF does seem to be the most prevalent container. There is software that claims to convert from PDF to a Kindle-compatible file but those too are unreliable.

On the plus side, unless you are fond of using your Kindle to read magazines and newspapers that have to be automatically uploaded via subscription, I don't imagine you'd miss the internet functionality that much. You can find tons of stuff online and then transfer them. The format is the only hurdle.

I hardly use the Kindle I got for Christmas right now but I sense I'll be appreciatin' it a whole lot more once in China.

Does anyone else like the kindle? I am pondering buying one before I come, just to save carrying loads of books over but not sure if it is worth the outlay-being a bit of a Luddite I am not 100% convinced about the thing yet, although lots of people seem to swear by them.
Comments?

Yes it's worth it especially if you are not in a major city that may have English language book shops.

I have a Kindle and I love it. As for formats, if you have an e-book, download calibre and format it into MOBI and put it on the kindle, easy as pie. I have purchased several books here on the kindle store and I have never encountered any IP address trouble.

I received my Kindle yesterday.  I bought it from the USA Amazon store, paid in UK Sterling, had it sent to Australia and then someone brought it back to China for me. So my little Kindle is quite a jetsetter; especially given that it was made in China.

I certainly have wispanet access, but I haven't tried downloading blogs and the like, so I don't know if everything / anything is blocked from Chinese IP addresses. Surely the wispanet doesn't use an IP address, but I'm not a techie. Not everywhere in China has wispanet, but Ningbo is on the east coast and reasonably near Taiwan. If this topic doesn't get blocked then I'll let you know more as I check out its capabilities.

Must admit I'm loving being able to read books that I've wanted to read for ages. The last few books that I had hard copies of were a bit nyaa.

The wispanet means that you can surf any internet site. However, when i went on to my Facebook homepage, the Kindle crashed. The paranoid side of me makes me think that the Chinese government are causing this. The realist side of me thinks that the Kindle simply doesn't have the processing power to keep up with my nieces' status updates.

I love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, LOOOOOOOOOVVVVVVVVEEEEEEEEEE my Kindle. I'm a crazy reading fantatic, and before the Kindle my only options were spend a ton of cash on so-so paperbacks at the foreign language bookshop, or read 10 year old copies of Jane Austen books. (Which i did re-read by the way.)

The Kindle has made me very, very happy, and the amt of books available on torrents is huge. Putting them on your kindle is no problem, any file type, as long as you use Calibre, a free program that is like an e-book library. Calibre automatically converts any book to be readable of the Kindle.

And just for the record I am a book lover. I like nothing better than holding a book in my hand, and if I was in America I wouldn't have bought it because I love using my local library. But English books are hard to come by in china, and outlandishly expensive if you are a fast reader, so I would say yes. Do it.

I get the message that you quite like the Kindle, Borkya ;-)

Is there any way at all you can buy e-books from Amazon using a Kindle in China? Say, if you use a proxy, downloaded them to your computer, then transfered them to your Kindle would that work? Or are you limited to free/torrented stuff?

there is one available wi-fi thingy (yeah, me and your average platypus share an equal knowledge of computer-related dohickeys) and I have logged onto that using my Kindle and bought books. Also, it is possible to buy the Amazon Kindle on Taobao, and it is not some copy fake thing, all Kindles come with an Amazon pin-number you have to use to activate it...a pirated Kindle would not have a functioning code and the one I bought for the gf did No need for vpn, proxy or any such nonsense, just go to the local starbucks or whereever there is a good wi-fi, log on to Amazon and make your credit card scream with pain

When you buy a book on amazon, you get a 'mailing' option. When you buy a kindle book the options are wifi immediate delivery, or download to your computer. I tend to download to my computer (cause wifi is few and far between where I live) and then just add to my calibre.

No VPN or anything needed. Seriously, everyone is making this out to be much harder than it is. Using a kindle in China is very, very easy.