Paulo Coelho signs exclusive deal with Amazon Kindle store

Paul Coelho joins Stephen R. Covey as (to my knowledge) the second author to sign an exclusive to sell digital editions of his books exclusively via Amazon's Kindle Store. Coelho's statements include the following:

"The great opportunity that Kindle offers to a writer is that it allows readers who are not in their country and do not have access to their local bookstores to immediately access texts in their mother tongue ... Therefore, it is with great joy that I now see all my books in Portuguese, so far only available abroad in a few specialized bookstores, being just a click away from all Portuguese readers that are around the world."

Unfortunately, what that really means is it's a click away from Portuguese readers that happen to own a Kindle or use their iPhone or PC apps. This is why I'm a proponent of ePub and Adobe Digital Editions - since it allows your book to be read on any reader (except Kindle), rather than one specific platform.

The full press release is available online.