Amazon has recently started selling Kindle ebooks directly from the Canadian Amazon website, Amazon.ca.
I’ve been waiting for Amazon to make an official announcement on the subject, but it looks like they aren’t going to. I guess they are going for the silent marketing approach on this one.
Up until recently all Kindle ebook purchases had to be routed through the US Amazon website for Canadian Kindle owners. Now Canadian Kindle owners can buy them direct from Amazon.ca and pay for them in Canadian dollars.
The weird thing is that Kindle devices are still being sold via Amazon.com instead Amazon Canada, and none of the newer models are available yet aside from the latest basic Kindle.
Maybe that’s why Amazon hasn’t announced the Canadian Kindle store yet: perhaps they are waiting to make the launch official until everything is ready.
The bigger story here is price. According to early reports at MobileRead, Canadian prices are often higher than US prices for the same ebook, even though the US and Canadian dollar are about the same.
Taking a look at the price difference of a few random titles, I’m sure glad I don’t have to pay Canadian prices. The Hobbit is $6.41 at Amazon.com and $11.99 on Amazon.ca. And a lot of the titles on the top 100 seem to be $1-$3 more. It’s not all bad, though. The Hunger Games Trilogy is 22 cents cheaper in Canada.
It’s good to see Amazon finally expanding the Kindle store into Canada, but it’s going to cause a lot of confusion and frustration if this is how pricing is going to work.
To make matters worse, the selection of books is different, and possibly less than the US site. I made the mistake of switching my account to the Canadian site and then realized that the Top 100 Free and Paid lists were not only different in what made the lists, but that there were far fewer books on the Canadian list. Maybe that will change over time as more people use the Canadian site, but I quickly figured out how to change my account back to the US site. And am much happier for it.
Amazon works in Mysterious Ways; I’m located in Holland, and I can’t order a Paperwhite or Fire variant. Were I located in Germany, France or Great Britain, I would be able to, albeit with a few weeks delay in delivery at this time.
Ordering from any Amazon site for these devices leads to a dead-end after my shipping address is processed when ordering.
It’s the main reason I finally reluctantly bought a lighted E-reader from a European manufacturer.
Amazon has also started amazon.com.br last week here at Brazil, and is selling ebooks. But no Kindle at all yet… And also no announcement. I was expecting a real bigbang around here, but ’til now was nothing more than a wet firecracker… And the suggested price of the Kindle (releasing in a few weeks, the basic one) is not much attractive, coming up to 299,00 BRL. Really? I mean, really??
I’ve created a web application to discover limited time free books in the Canadian Kindle store: http://www.heidoc.net/amazon/kindle.php – hope you’ll appreciate this.
A Brazilian verion is in development, and will be in place before Christmas.
Thanks for the very nice web application Jan!