I have pre-ordered a Kindle. For the first time, I have been considering buying e-books as a viable alternative to piracy.
I knew that the surcharge in ebooks in Europe compared to the US was due to VAT and to 3G roaming charges, so I contacted Amazon to ask them what happens if I buy ebooks using my WiFi connection from the Kindle. Or using my PC and then transferring the ebook via USB. Or buying through the Kindle app in my Android smartphone. They said that there's no discount and I have to pay the full price no matter what. I was not happy.
(Please bear with me, the georestriction bit is coming...)
Having heard that the Amazon UK store is much cheaper, I decided to do some research. How many ebooks by my favourite authors are available in the British, American and European Kindle stores? B&N has very similar prices, catalogue and restrictions as the Amazon US store, so there's no point in comparing it. What about Kobo? Of course, I would need to deDRM the Kobo ebooks and convert to Mobi, but...
Code:
Author UK USA Europe Kobo
Charles Stross 6 10 10 10
Neil Gaiman 3 12 8 9
Neal Stephenson 2 12 5 7
Robert A. Heinlein 1 5 4 4
George R.R. Martin 14 20 17 9
Brian W. Aldiss 5 1 5 2
Stephen Fry 1 4 4 1
Chuck Palahniuk 1 11 2 2
Orson Scott Card 3 39 3 2
Stephen King* 50 80 62 53
Philip K. Dick 27 158 49 30
Note 1 (edited): Please see screenshot below in case the table alignment is wrong.
Note 2: The Stephen King ebooks are just an approximate. He has lots of duplicates, so I had to guess.
Note 3: Even though Terry Pratchett is my favourite author, his ebooks are not in the list because I collect his pbooks and I am not planning to change that now. My bookshelves look very nice with such a collection!
Buying from the US / European Kindle stores means more expensive books than paperbacks from Amazon UK.
I just cannot accept ebooks as more expensive than pbooks. On the other hand, the UK Kindle store is even a bit cheaper than British paperbacks, but the selection is extremely poor.
So back to square one. I don't know what to do.
