The Kindle Paperwhite and Kindle Fire HD will go on sale in European countries, including the UK, within weeks, and pre-orders are now open.

The slates are already available in the United States, and will make their way to the UK, Italy, Spain, and France on Oct. 25, in time for the lucrative holiday shopping season. Amazon will also launch its Lending Library in the countries for the first time, enabling Amazon prime subscribers to borrow from an extensive collection of 200,000 books for free.

The Kindle Paperwhite e-reader comes in Wi-Fi-only and Wi-Fi-plus 3G variants, for £109 and £169, respectively, and is available for pre-order on Amazon UK. Meanwhile the 7-inch Kindle Fire HD comes with a £159 price tag for the 16GB version and £199 for the 32GB version, and is available for pre-order here. Those who want an ad-free Kindle Fire HD will have to pay an extra £10, meaning £169 for the 16GB version and £209 for the 32GB one.

According to Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos, the company is not making a profit on the devices themselves.

"We sell the hardware at our cost, so it's break-even on the hardware," he told the BBC on Thursday, Oct. 11. "We want to make money when people use our devices, not when they buy our devices. After you buy a Kindle Fire HD you may use it to buy books, games, movies and so on. So that continuing relationship with the customer is where we hope to make money over time."

Amazon uses a customized version of Android for its Kindle Fire line, bringing in its own storefront rather than Google's Play Store. Amazon also makes it easy for customers to buy books at any time with its e-readers.

The kindle Fire HD is in direct competition with Google's Nexus 7 tablet, which also aims to serve as a channel to media sales. The devices are similarly priced and both offer a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels. Amazon's offering comes with more storage for the same price, while Google's tablet is more powerful, packing a quad-core processor rather than a dual-core one.

The Kindle Paperwhite, meanwhile, is a significant improvement over previous iterations of the device. The touch-controlled device comes with a built-in illumination system for the screen, and Amazon said it is the device it always wanted to build. The company is also touting the screen's high contrast and resolution, offering a more paper-like experience than the cheaper Kindles.