It seems to be the lot of Kindle owners to be unpaid demo merchants for the things at the moment. If you have one you're probably in the same boat. Someone you know is interested and begs, 'Show me...'

Happened to me last night so a 'sales meeting' was duly arranged, at the local pub. I'm an odd Kindle user. I like the thing but prefer printed books whenever possible. However I do use Kindle frequently for proofing my own work, something it does wonderfully. I can send a Word file to my Kindle email address and have a draft manuscript converted into a Kindle document which I can read on the Kindle hardware and on Kindle apps for PCs, Macs, Android (everything except the iPad which doesn't let me get the file for some reason, at least as far as I can see).

<!--more-->Two interesting things from last night's meeting. First, my interested guinea pig wanted to know what newspapers looked like on the Kindle. I've never tried them. So I set up a trial subscription for the Daily Telegraph and downloaded the latest edition.

Same words, same articles, though I wasn't convinced it was the whole paper. Guinea pig, who loved books on the Kindle, looked at it and shook his head. Never in a million years, he said. I felt the same way too. The shape's wrong. This looks like a book reader, not a newspaper reader. Won't work.

Second interesting thing... the woman behind the bar looked at the Kindle and said, 'I got one of those for Christmas.'

She loves it naturally, and sold the thing to the guinea pig better than I could (perhaps because I didn't feel I was there to sell it). Key question guinea pig asked her: do you read more now?

Answer: I've bought four books on Kindle since Christmas. Ordinarily I would have bought one. The Kindle goes everywhere with me in my bag.

Impressive stuff...