Amazon UK Kindle store opens: Page-turners in pounds and pence

Amazon has thrown open the doors of its UK ebook store. British-based owners of the Amazon Kindle ebook reader can now download over W-Fi and 3G from amazon.co.uk/kindlestore, and pay in good old-fashioned British pounds.

The new Kindle with 3G and Wi-Fi costs £150, and a Wi-Fi-only version is £110. Pay the extra for 3G, and you get free 3G coverage wherever you are -- even overseas -- so you only pay for the book you're downloading.

Prices range from £8.54 for Terry Pratchett's latest, I Shall Wear Midnight, to £2.70 for The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, in case you're the only person in the world who hasn't read it.

Assorted newspapers and magazines can be automatically delivered to your Kindle, including the Daily Telegraph, the Economist, and The Financial Times. They all come with a free 14-day trial.

The new 3G Kindle is the first to be properly supported in Blighty, after the international Kindle allowed you to buy from the US ebook store.

The US store is cheaper but there's not much in it: I Shall Wear Midnight is about 90p cheaper in the US and Hornet's Nest is 60p cheaper. There's about 10p difference between the US and UK versions of The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, and The Accidental Billionaires, Ben Mezrich's source for the forthcoming Facebook movie The Social Network.

If you own an international Kindle, you'll receive instructions on your device for how to migrate to a UK account and start paying in pounds. To transfer your ebooks and other content to a new Kindle, visit your Kindle management Web page, choose the 'deliver to' option, and select your new Kindle.You can also transfer via USB cable. For full details visit chapter 10 of the online Kindle user guide.

Do you own a Kindle -- or another ebook reader, like the iriver Story, Sony Reader Touch Edition PRS-600 or even the Apple iPad? Tell us about in the comments -- read any good books lately?