Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) Opens Kindle Store in India

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) has established a foothold in one of the largest emerging markets in the world, as the company announced the opening of a Kindle and e-book store in India, plus the company announced a partnership with domestic electronics retailer Croma to sell the Kindle for about $126. This model is the non-ad-supported basic model hat does not have a touchscreen, that retailed for $79 in the U.S. with ad support.

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) said that its first India Kindle Store will contain more than 1 million titles and will include 70 of the top 100 Nielsen Bestsellers and many local authors. Amazon.com also announced that it is launching Kindle Direct Publishing in India for self-publishers, a service that has been available to authors in the U.S. It is expected that with direct publishing available that Indian authors would be able to present their e-books to the market outside of India (including the U.S., which is the largest e-book market in the world), but also U.S. authors may be able to expand their consumer market into India, which has an estimated 1.2 billion people – four times more than the U.S. population. Authors could publish through KDP for free, and Amazon.com may pay royalties to successful authors who use the service.

“We are proud to launch this new Kindle store for Indian customers – offering Kindle book purchases in rupees and the ability to buy and read the work of many great Indian authors,” said Russ Grandinetti, Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) vice president. “In addition, we are excited to work with Croma to make Kindle available at retail outlets across India.”

The competition for e-book market share has intensified of late, considering several companies have been looking to expand outisde the U.S. Earlier this week, Barnes & Noble Inc. (NYSE:BKS) revealed that it is moving its Nook e-book reader overseas into the United Kingdom