Amazon is not shipping Kindle Reader outside the US but you can always ask your cousin there to get a Kindle for you on her next trip to India.

But there’s another problem. You need a credit card with a US billing address if you were to buy any book, magazine or newspaper for reading on Kindle from the Amazon store.

Worry no more as Kindle user Stephanie has found an easy workaround to this problem - Amazon Gift cards.

The trick is that you buy a Gift Certificate at Amazon using your international Credit Card and then make a purchase for Kindle using this gift certificate. The steps are:

1. Go to Amazon.com and create a new Amazon.com account. Do not use your existing Amazon account.

2. Use a generic email address like gmail.com (with your location set to U.S.) instead of something that is country specific (ie, .co.uk, .fr) otherwise Amazon will block Kindle purchases.

3. Use a U.S. mailing address - it doesn’t really matter what address because nothing is going to be shipped there, so look up Pizza Hut in Fresno, CA if you want. Just make sure that the zip code is valid.

4. Set up 1-Click payment method associated with your Kindle to make the Kindle books button enabled for purchase. Enter a valid (international) credit card number but use the U.S. billing address that you set up earlier. This seems to work because once you add the gift certificate Amazon doesn’t attempt to authorise your credit card until you run out of gift certificate credit.

Amazon Store policy is that when you redeem an Amazon Gift Card, any available balance is used for your Kindle store purchase before your credit or debit card gets charged. This does the trick for Kindle uses outside US.

Another important point - If you are based in USA, books and newspapers are delivered wirelessly to your Kindle Reader but since this feature is not available in other countries, you can download Kindle purchases from the Media Library on Amazon.com and transfer them to Kindle via a USB cable.

Also see: Download Free eBooks for Kindle