I’ve been paying more attention to Kindle prices lately now that Amazon has started rolling out the new book cover feature on Kindle e-readers, and it’s surprising how much prices vary from one country to the next, especially when it comes to the Kindle Paperwhite.
In most countries Amazon doesn’t sell ad-supported Kindles so in those regions they all automatically get access to the new book cover feature without having to pay extra to remove ads.
In the United States it costs $20 to remove ads on Kindles, also called Special Offers, and since book cover images will only appear on ad-free Kindles, people are having to pay extra to get access to this new feature, which seems kind of ridiculous.
It’s even more ridiculous when you start comparing prices of Kindles in other countries.
For example, the 8GB Kindle Paperwhite without ads only costs $139.99 in Canada, which is equivalent to $113.69 USD.
Meanwhile in the US, that exact same ad-free Kindle Paperwhite sells for $149.99 USD.
In Mexico the ad-free Kindle Paperwhite currently sells for the equivalent of $134.30 USD, which is only a few bucks more than the ad-supported Kindle in the US.
Kindle prices seem really high in the UK, but they have 20% added on for VAT so the prices aren’t really as high as they appear. The same 8GB Kindle Paperwhite without ads sells for £129.99 in the UK, which translates to $181.34 USD. Subtract 20% for VAT and that’s $151.12 USD, so it’s about the same price as it is in the US.
Amazon tries to make it out like they’re doing us a favor by offering ad-supported models at a “discount”, but if you compare the prices to non-ad versions in other countries they aren’t really offering much of a discount at all. Some countries pay more, some pay less, so it doesn’t really seem fair to charge extra to remove ads in countries that are already paying a higher price for the same Kindle.
“The same 8GB Kindle Paperwhite without ads sells for £129.99 in the UK, which translates to $181.34 USD. Take 20% off that and it’s still less than Americans are paying ($145.07).”
You’ve got the maths wrong. To “subtract” 20% from $181.34, you need to divide this amount by 1.2, which gives you $151.12. That means the ad-free Kindle Paperwhite is ever so slightly more expensive in the UK than in the US, even excluding VAT.
Good catch! It was too early in the morning for math. 😀 It also seems that it only costs £10 to remove ads in the UK (about $13.88 instead of $20).
I agree.
Here in Brazil it costs the equivalent of U$88,77. It’s still expensive, because our coin ( the Real ) is very cheap. 1 Real = U$ 5.34 today. Amazon don’t sell add-supported paperwhite here.
.
So funny, in Brazil I’ve never heard of such thing as ads on kindle, and the paperwhite here costs R$499,90, which in current currency is $93,64 (but note that real is doing really bad, it’s worth half of what it was a couple of years ago, so the price for us is kinda expensive, almost half of a minimum wage!)
The price in Brazil is R$474 . Only ff you pay in 12x it would be 499,90 .
Each time you write a post about Amazon, Kindle, etc. I don’t read it. This is the exception. A monopolistic wanna-be company I hate. I’ll never subscribe to or Audible.
Excuse my poor English.