I woke up to some exciting news this morning: Amazon is launching its Kindle on the international market! (Thanks to Kat for the heads up.)
Once the initial euphoria wore off, and I’d perused the information available on the Amazon website, I was left with more questions than answers. The Kindle can be ordered by international customers directly from Amazon.com. It costs $279 plus shipping and the inevitable import costs.
It’s all rather vague as to which books are available to which countries. As a customer living in Switzerland, I can apparently choose from 290,000 titles. A customer from Bulgaria can choose from just 170,000. I’m assuming it’s made clear at the checkout but I would like more transparency while I’m actually shopping. As geographical restrictions are unlikely to have magically disappeared, I’d like to know which books I’m allowed to buy before purchasing a Kindle.
Another element which gives me pause is the negative feedback I’ve heard regarding Amazon Kindle’s customer service. As a potential customer living abroad, I want to know returning a faulty item won’t prove problematic. Swiss Post is notoriously expensive and the import costs are not to be scoffed at. Would Amazon reimburse me for those costs should it prove necessary to return my Kindle?
As I learn more, I’ll update this post. For now, here are a few links
- The announcement on Amazon.com
- An article in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (in German & probably only interesting for Swiss residents)
- An Australian blog post which argues the Kindle is more of a bookselling than a reading revolution. (Thanks to Kat for this link!)
What do you think of Amazon’s move to conquer the international ebook market? If you live outside the US, are you planning on buying a Kindle?
{ 5 comments }
I’m welcoming the news, but not probably not for the reasons that most people think:
1. I’m hoping it will stimulate the Australian ebook market. It’s dismal, but I think the volume of sales that Amazon will bring—just from hype alone—might give retailers and publishers a kick up the proverbial.
2. I’m hoping it’ll encourage publishers to release local titles as ebooks.
But, like you, I have loads more questions:
- What will it mean for parallel import restrictions?
- Will Amazon be required to pay GST? (If not, why not? That would be an unfair advantage over local bookshops.)
- Will Amazon be subject to Australian fair trading laws if it doesn’t actually have a local subsidiary?
- Should I wait for Apple to release a tablet? Oh, wait…
I should add that much as I love the THOUGHT of owning an ebook reader, I’m not buying one just yet for most of the reasons outlined in the post you linked to.
Sarah – I live in the States and at our Amazon store when you click on a book there is a little caption underneath the picture that states “click here if you would like to start reading on your Kindle in under a minute” Something to that effect anyway. Maybe the international Amazon store will have this same option. That way you can search for books you would like to buy and see if they are available in kindle format.
@Jill D. I managed to find the Kindle editions section but it is very vague on which countries can buy which books due to geographical restrictions. In other words, I can see if a book is available as a Kindle edition to international customers, but I can’t see which international customers exactly. Each country has its own quoted number of books which will be available to them. Switzerland has quite a few at 290,000. Australia has 10,000 less than us at 280,000. No clue why that is. Bulgarians can only buy 170,000 books. Now if we only knew which of those books were available to each country…
Sarah, I still don’t even understand WHY Australia has geographic restrictions. Our parallel import laws clearly allow for one-off customer orders for imported books. I would think Kindle purchases would fall into that loophole.
Of the numbers you quoted, I wonder how many are books out of copyright…
@Kat That’s a very interesting question. US Kindle users have access to over 350,000 titles. That means you and I have between 60,000 and 70,000 fewer titles to choose from. I’d like to know which books those are. Given the furore over geographical restrictions at Fictionwise and other etailers, I’d imagine the restricted Kindle books will also be new releases. In other words, the very books we’d be interested in purchasing.
{ 1 trackback }