Nice. Now, if they'd just drop their surcharge for ordering ebooks in mainland Europe I might actually use it. Paying $3-%5 extra per book just because I live somewhere else doesn't make sense with ebooks.
Don't complain to Amazon about their ebook prices. Since "agency pricing", they're (mostly) not allowed to set them anymore. Beyond agency pricing, some European countries (e.g. France, Germany) have tried to regulate the prices of ebooks themselves. Sadly, Amazon is stuck just as much as you are.
This specific complaint is about Amazon though. Even if a publisher sets the exact same price for every region, Amazon sometimes adds their own "Whispernet tax" of about $2 + VAT. They seem to be gradually phasing it out now, but for the longest time, there were e.g. no free books outside the US, because even books listed as "free" actually cost a minimum of $2 + tax.
This is because all kindles in mainland Europe all have
(edit) AT&T SIMs in them. It costs Amazon SIGNIFICANTLY more for you to use whispernet, because you are constantly roaming. The reason you pay the tax if you buy it on something other than the kindle itself is because at some point you could sync it on to your kindle, though archived items.
Sure, except that even Kindles that are wi-fi only had to pay the extra $2, not to mention those reading only on the PC or mobile app. It was a stupid system, but as I said, they are fortunately phasing the whole thing out now, and many books already have pricing parity (well, excluding VAT, but that's not Amazon's fault).
Strange. When I got my Kindle, it sounded like the "Whispernet tax" only applied when you bought books on the Kindle (so they were actually using Whispernet) outside of your home country. In other words, I'd be charged for Whispernet when using my US Kindle in Europe, but there would be no charge when I'm home (and there would be no charge if I bought via amazon.com and transferred via USB).
I had expected that the converse was true as well (a European would be charged for Whispernet in the US, but not in their home country and not when using USB). Since that isn't the case, I agree that sucks. I'm also more than a little surprised since it doesn't seem plausibly related to any actual cost Amazon bears.
FWIW, I'm in the UK and I've never heard of this whispernet tax before. Free books have been free ever since I got it (November). That might be related to there being a distinct "UK" edition of the kindle.
If you are in the EU but outside the UK (and I think Germany), you have to order books from Amazon.com. A free book costs $2 to deliver over whispernet
Well, if you're buying a classic book that's "free", you can often find the exact book that Amazon's "selling" at Project Gutenberg. Download to computer, copy to Kindle, done.
Of course that's not the easiest way, and you can't do it "on the go", but a little preplanning will get you a bookshelf of books already queued up.
As far as I understand you have more surcharges to fear from European authorities than from Amazon.
Signed - unhappy person living in Norway, where the government is enforcing VAT (which is 25%) on all digital services bought abroad, including ebooks and Apple Store apps. Which is especially lame given that actual books are exempt from VAT (I love actual books, but why the unequal treatment?)
I'm from Germany and I have heard from people who have registered their account with a address in the united states and a valid credit card which is also registered to a guy living in the united states. If you can do this you can buy from the american kindle store and you are paying for the same books less money than european customers.
I hope they will get this right without a hack in the future.
Hmm, I am from Germany, too. I don't have a Kindle, but I use the Android and other Kindle Apps and I have purchased several books and even a magazine subscription using my german credit card (and never gave them an additional address in the states). Also, I can sign into Amazon.com using my german Amazon account, I don't remember when they changed this, but at some point it just worked. I am not going to move to the German Amazon Kindle Store, as for example that magazine subscription is not available in the German Kindle store. To me, that is the real problem at hand (besides the fact that they shouldn't expect you to pay the same amount of money for a digitally distributed version as you would have to pay for the dead tree version, but that's a totally different issue, which has already been discussed a lot).
There's no problem in using the Kindle store from other countries -- you're just paying $3-$5 dollars more for exactly the same thing as you'd get if you are registered in the US.
You can check this by going to the same kindle page with an account with a US-based address, or a proxy in the US. For example, here are the prices for two ebooks, one from .nl and one through an anonymous proxy:
I think sometimes it's not that people are cheap, it's just that the internet's been out for almost 20 years and these legal barriers that screw the customer don't need to exist.
Say what you like about bittorrent, at least it's egalitarian.
The surcharge has nothing to do with which country's store you use. Users in UK/Germany/Switzerland/Austria (and Lichtenstein?) do not have to pay the extra fee regardless of whether they use .com, .co.uk or .de. Users in other European countries pay it no matter what.
(E.g. your example book shows up as $4.03 from Switzerland).
I'm in Pakistan where Amazon doesn't even sell Kindles or books. The way I bypass that is to go to my Amazon account on their website, and set my country as US.
I have been buying books from the American kindle store and paying using a non-US credit card and it works just fine, have been doing so for over a year.
It works even with a US delivery address in your account that is separate from a possibly non-US billing address. You can simply switch back and forth the country in your profile to optimize for catalog availability and pricing.
