Quote:
Originally Posted by xendula
How do they justify charging you an extra $2 per book? What do they call the extra charge? And to tie this conversation in with the topic at hand:some kindle books are cheaper in other countries.
BTW, yapyap, we read many of the same books this year  |
They don't call it anything. As far as I know, they've always completely refused to say what the surcharge is for. It's just there, when you don't live in one of the handful of countries that doesn't have it (all the major English-language countries by now, i.e. Canada and Australia haven't had it for a couple of years now + everyone that has their own Kindle storefront, I think).
And cool.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Blue Tyson
It isn't Amazon, it is the usurious rates that telcos charge for mobile data 'international roaming' - like their bandwidth is made of platinum.
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See, if it had
anything to do with
my 3G usage, I wouldn't complain. As it is, it looks like the most likely explanation is that everyone outside Amazon's important markets gets to pay for the international "free" 3G usage of the customers in Amazon's important countries regardless of whether they have a 3G capable Kindle or not (or whether they have a Kindle at all). The surcharge is always there, included in the book price on the book page, and has nothing to do with what device I'm sending it to or how I'm buying/downloading it.
(It's the most obvious with books self-published via Amazon's KDP as trad-pubbed book prices can vary across different regions for other reasons, but when all self-pubbed books that the author has set at $0.99 cost $3.44 for me ($0.99+$2+15% VAT) and books set at $2.99 cost $5.74 for me ($2.99+$2+15% VAT) and books set at $4.99 cost $8.04 ($4.99+$2+15% VAT), it's pretty clear and usually comes as a surprise to the authors who have no idea their "very very cheap" books cost considerably more for potential customers in most countries.)
Anyway, Amazon is free to add whatever extra charges they can think of to book prices for international customers, of course, but it does mean that when I'm being honest about where I live, Amazon is practically always the most expensive shop for me and often by a considerable margin - e.g. the average trad-pubbed "genre" book that costs $7.99 for Americans tends to cost $5.76 for my Austrian friend on Amazon, $11.03 for me on Amazon and around $5.60-$5.80 for me on BooksOnBoard, depending on what their current general discounts are, and if there's a 40% off Kobo coupon around, can be had for a bit less than that there.
Anyway, yes - the Deals, Freebies etc forum here is a good place to keep up with Kobo coupons and BooksOnBoard sales, which are both excellent ways to keep costs down. Especially when you live in a country where Agency pricing does not apply so that all the books are discountable, including all those by major publishers. They're still good but probably a bit less useful still for now for people in the US and other countries where most of the big six publishers still get to set fixed prices.