Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
And that's the way it will probably be. It certainly is when you compare amazon.com with amazon.co.uk. There's really no reason to expect a consistent difference once way or the other.
Won't you save money, though, by not having to pay the currency conversion fees on your credit card through paying in Canadian rather than US dollars?
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$1.00 = 1.01US right now. It's been pretty even for the last few years with the Canadian dollar dipping to the 0.90 range every now and then.
With the switch to Amazon.ca, I will now be paying tax on my books when I wasn't before which for me is 10% (5% provincal and 5% federal.) Taxing books is one of the most assinine things Canada taxes. Tax literacy, way to go.
I based my decision on a few things, but mainly that I was tired of clicking on titles only to have the price change or for it to say not available outside the US. There were something like 200,000 books published in Canada and the United States last year. Add in the United Kingdom and I've got a huge supply of potential titles to find something to read from. I finally went down the Amazon.ca path based on looking at my readin list for this year which is as good a random sample as any for me and found three titles availabe on Amazon.com and not on Amazon.ca. Prices were for the most part way better than 10% better at Amazon.ca except for a couple of exceptions (Terry Pratchett at about the same price was one.) All of those titles I couldn't find were available at Chapters (except a couple which aren't available anywhere, but I expected that.)
More random comparisons for ca / com
Postcards (Proulx) 16.99 / 20.19
Joy Luck Club (Tan) 13.99 / 16.63
The Loser (Thomas) 13.99 / 16.33
Inmates are Running... (Cooper) 10.77 / 10.91
Anansi Boys (Gaiman) 8.99 / 10.40
Overall, it seems like I can buy twelve and get one free by shopping on .ca. Given that the vast majority of what I read is modern/literary fiction and then mainstream Fantasy and Science Fiction the prices work better for me. I made very few Amazon.com e-book purchases due to prices being way past $15 in most cases.
Right now sales are not as good on Canada's site. The monthly deals only has 50 titles instead of 100 for the US site, but the titles I almost always saw on the US one were not saled in Canada anyway.