Some good news for book worms in India. You can now buy Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader from select TATA Croma stores here and if you don’t have one in your city, you can order it online at cromaretail.com.

What’s new then? While it has always been possible to buy Kindle directly from amazon.com, the Croma advantage is that you don’t need an international credit card and you can even pay for the device using your Debit card or through net banking.

The Wi-Fi 6” version of Kindle costs 7k at Croma while competing online stores like IndiaTimes and IndiaPlaza offer the same Kindle model for 9.5k and 11k  respectively.

You may think it is still quite a heavy premium since the cheapest Kindle is just $79 (or 4.4k) on Amazon.com but there’s a difference. The $79 Kindle is the sponsored model (it has ads) that Amazon will only ship to a US  address. The international model that Croma is selling will cost you around $150 (base price is $109 + shipping + import duties) if you buy it directly from Amazon.

Amazon Kindle Store in India

Amazon has also launched an India-specific Kindle Store where you have an option to pay for your ebook purchases in Indian Rupees (INR) using your domestic Visa or MasterCard.

The Indian Kindle store isn’t any different from the U.S. version except that is only lists titles that are available for purchase in India. You cannot purchase newspapers and magazine subscriptions from the India store though.

Related: Head over to Hundred Zeros for tons of free Kindle ebooks.

Price your eBooks for the Indian Kindle Store

If you have been selling your ebooks in the Kindle store through KDP, you can now set a India specific price for your ebook (see chart below). The downside is that Amazon would only pay authors a 35% royalty for books sold in the Indian Kindle store. [PDF]

You only get 35% royalty for books sold in the Kindle Indian Store