NEWS | By The Chapter & Verse Team » You can bet it will be one of the hottest gifts for Christmas 2009: Amazon's Kindle is finally available to Canadians.

In an announcement on its website, Amazon.com said it will now ship the Kindle 2 to customers in Canada, about a month after making it available to 100 other countries.

The main reason for the delay was reportedly because Amazon had not yet  struck a deal with a wireless carrier in Canada to allow it to deliver wireless content to the Kindle. There was no comment from Amazon whether such a deal was now in place.

The popular ebook reader - Amazon's bestselling product - is priced at US$259, but Canadians will have to pay for shipping plus taxes, which will bump up the price to about US$311. Given the current strength of the loonie, it is a good deal with the conversion working out to about C$330.

Kindle 2 wirelessly downloads books, magazines and newspapers to a crisp, high-resolution 6-inch electronic ink display that looks and reads like real paper. It utilizes the same 3G wireless technology as advanced cell phones, so you never need to hunt for a Wi-Fi hotspot.

"We know that Canadians are passionate about books and reading, and we're excited to make Kindle available to our customers there," Ian Freed, vice president of Kindle said in a release announcing Kindle’s Canadian debut. "Kindle enables customers around the world including Canada to think of a book and start reading it in under 60 seconds."

The Kindle Store offers Canadian customers over 300,000 books, including New Releases and Globe and Mail Bestsellers, which are typically U.S. $11.99 or less.

More than 90 top newspapers and magazines are also available in the Kindle Store for single purchase or subscription. Available for the first time on Kindle are Canada's national newspapers The Globe & Mail and The National Post. Additionally, all of Canwest's major daily newspapers will be available on Kindle coming soon. They join top papers such as Le Monde (France), The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Times (U.K.), The Daily Telegraph (U.K.) and The Washington Post.

Some of the features that have helped make Kindle the #1 bestselling product on Amazon include:

Slim and Trim: At just over a third of an inch thin (0.36 inches) and weighing just over 10 ounces, Kindle is pencil thin and lighter than a typical paperback.

3G Wireless: Readers can wirelessly shop the Kindle Store, download books in less than 60 seconds, automatically receive newspaper and magazine subscriptions, and read from their library-now in more than 100 countries and territories including Canada.

Reads Like Real Paper: Kindle's 6-inch electronic ink display reads like printed words on paper because the screen works using real ink and doesn't use a backlight, eliminating the eyestrain and glare associated with other electronic displays.

Stores Up to 1,500 Books: Kindle's 2 GB of memory holds up to 1,500 books and Kindle books are automatically backed up by Amazon so customers can re-download titles in their library.

Read for Weeks on a Single Charge: Kindle's electronic paper display sips battery power so users can read for over two weeks with wireless turned off and up to four days on a single charge with wireless on.

Read-To-Me: With the experimental Text-To-Speech feature, Kindle can read most newspapers, magazines and books out loud.

Automatically Syncs With Kindle and Kindle Compatible Devices: Amazon's "Whispersync" technology automatically syncs customers' last page read, bookmarks, notes, and highlights across Kindle, Kindle DX, and Kindle compatible devices like Kindle for iPhone and Kindle for PC.

Read Personal Documents: Read personal documents in a variety of formats such as Microsoft Word and PDF.

Instant Dictionary Lookup: Kindle comes with the New Oxford American Dictionary and over 250,000 definitions that appear instantly at the bottom of the page.

Choose Text Size: Kindle lets readers customize their reading preference by providing six different text sizes.

Bookmarks, Notes and Highlights: By using the QWERTY keyboard, Kindle users can add annotations to text, as well as highlight and clip key passages and bookmark pages for future use.

View the Kindle page on Amazon.com