Kindle helps to master yoga during the retreat in Goa

I just came back from my first yoga retreat in Goa. I and my wife Ania  were following, for two weeks, daily yoga classes with Mark Robberds in  Purple Valley.  We started our  Ashtanga Yoga journey in December last year. For me, going to India was a logical step to master Ashtanga. I found Purple Valley on the Internet and the moment new yoga classes were published I booked our November retreat. It was a great experience: both the place and our teacher far exceeded our expectations. We are already planning on  coming back.
At the beginning of the retreat Mark recommended some books. Despite of the quite shaky Internet connection in the Valley I managed to download   The Mirror of Yoga by Richard Freeman. Other iPad owners followed my example and started to use Kindle and enjoyed benefits of instant access to Kindle books.

For me this yoga retreat was, like the Kilimanjaro climb six years ago, a real breakthrough in my lifestyle. The Kilimanjaro climb made me run every week for at least 10 kilometers. Hopefully after this yoga retreat I will start training yoga every day.  Some other retreat attendees will join enthusiastic iPad Kindle readers.....

Is iPad contributing to Amazon record E-Book sales?

Few weeks ago Amazon reported that after less than four years of selling electronic books, it's now selling more of them than printed books.

Amazon sells 105 electronic books for every 100 printed ones.

This news did not surprise me. Not just because the analysts frequently reported the growing e-book reading Kindle devices sales.

Since I purchased my iPad a year ago I was a frequent Amazon customer buying Kindle eBooks.

I purchased my first e-book more than a year ago just a few days after I bought the iPad to have something to read on the way back to Amsterdam. As I could not purchase anything via iTunes due to a lack of a billing address in US I was forced to buy on Amazon and bought a Kindle version of eBook. It was the New York Times bestseller "Change your Brain Change your Body" by Dr. Amen

A very fascinating journey through a recent brain-body connection research.
My collection of Kindle E-books on my iPad is growing and at the moment I carry with me:
"Creativity in Product Innovation" by Jacob Goldenberg
"The Adversity Advantage" by Paul G. Stoltz
"The 4 - Hour Workweek" by Timothy Ferriss
"Full Catastrophe Living" Jon Kabat-Zinn
Today I bought the Travel Goa book as we plan to go there in November. Initially just to compare the iBook reading experience with Kindle I tried to buy the iBook version.
That try was a big failure. Unfortunately the Travel Goa book was only available in the US iTunes store and not in the Dutch one.
As long as Apple will keep confusing readers with restrictions while buying iBooks in different countries Amazon’s Kindle is - in my view - the best choice for eBooks on iPad.
My eBook reading experience was very positive.

I discovered unique features of the Kindle iPad reader as sharing my notes with my wife or highlights with the Amazon E-books readers community. I often read the Kindle free samples on my iPhone to review the book first and find it fantastic to have an opportunity to learn and start reading a new book almost immediately after I have heard about it.

I am convinced that the Kindle iPad application contributes to a large extend to Amazon great e-Books sales numbers. It is quite ironic as the iPad is a direct competitor to Kindle device. It's also ironic that due to very restrictive iTunes policy I was forced to do my first iPad purchase in the US on Amazon giving me an opportunity to learn Kindle E-books.

I still buy lots of printed books and I already know that some of them I will also purchase in E-book format. I do not think I will switch over to eBooks completely as there is nothing like a smell and touch of a new book (:
Amazon reported that the latest and the cheapest version of a Kindle device is the bestseller of the line.
However, despite of the Kindle device success, I would bet that in just a few years more Kindle eBooks will be read on iPads and Android tablets than on Kindle devices.