Always nice to see another Canadian on board. There are a couple of location
polls you can go
vote in, if you feel so inclined.
1) It depends whether your reader has a search function to begin with. But yes, if it does, then it seems you can usually search across both a single book and all of them (I'm not sure whether anyone has yet put in a function to search within a selection).
My Kindle does this readily. Well, more like slowly if it's across all the books.
2) Of the majors, B&N officially sells only a tiny fraction of its titles to Canada. You'd basically have to pretend to be located in the US in order to buy books there.
Amazon, Sony, and Kobo all officially sell to Canada in quantity, but the selection can be geo-restricted because of regional rights or publisher issues.
Smaller outlets and specialty stores depend, but pretty much all the ones that sell DRM-free books are generous about out-of-country customers. Ones that are region-specific, like Waterstones or WH Smith in the UK, or Borders (US and Australia), will not sell to you without major hoop-jumping to disguise your origins.
3) It depends on which device you get, because of the competing file formats. Here's a brief rundown of which can read/buy from what, without taking into account the horizons potentially opened up by removal of DRM (not yet illegal in Canada, despite the best efforts of our corporate-pandering current Conservative government) and conversion.
Kindle: can only buy from Amazon and non-DRM stores (may have to convert, since Kindle reads only Topaz, Mobi, PDF, and plain text formats).
Cannot buy "Secure" Mobipocket books without modifying them despite Amazon's owning the Mobipocket format, because they decided not to include support for the old Mobi-DRM in the Kindle, for reasons best known to themselves. Have also not licensed out the new DRM-scheme now used to anyone else, so only non-copy-protected files from any other source will work "out of the box".
Nook and JetBook Lite: supports both Adobe Digital Editions and Barnes & Noble-DRM ePub and PDF, and also eReader formats both plain and "Secure" (except the Nook Color model dropped support for eReader).
Can buy from B&N, any ADE-DRM supporting store like Kobo, Sony, and any number of small specialty stores (also library books), the slowly-doomed Fictionwise ("Secure" selections; their MultiFormat stuff is DRM-free and will work on anything) and eReader.com, and non-DRM books, of course (will probably not have to convert, as ePub is pretty common these days).
Sony/Kobo/other ADE-supporting readers: supports ADE-DRM ePub and PDF, may also read plain text/RTF/LRF/other depending on model.
Can buy at any ADE-DRM supporting store or library (you can put Sony books on your Kobo reader and vice versa), and of course non-DRM books. May also buy the few non-DRM ePubs available at B&N (but generally you can't tell in advance which publishers don't use it, though if you happen to like erotic romance, you're in luck).
4) Depends on how strict the site is about things. You can't even browse Kobo for books outside your real country unless you route it through an IP hosted in your target locale and/or fill in a billing address for that area into your account.
At a minimum, you will usually need to enter a US billing/shipping address (not necessarily one you have any real claim to). A US-based VPN IP proxy is also helpful.
The trick seems to be to keep the façade up at all times. You may find it helpful to establish an entirely separate account for these acquisitions, instead of switching your address back and forth like some people have done.
Always access your "US" account and do your downloads using the proxy for best results. It probably helps avoid getting the "please supply proof of residence" notice that Amazon sometimes sends out.
LIBRARIES: extremely easy, though how good the selection will be will depend on where you live. Calgary, BC, and Manitoba are currently in the lead for # of e-books available, and you can check if someplace in your area offers stuff via the
Overdrive search if your library's website doesn't already have a link.
If nothing in your area turns up, and you don't have an enabling friend or relative in a suitable city, then there's always the
Philadelphia Free Library, for which you can get a non-resident card for $15 USD per year and access to their e-book catalogue.
The three common e-book formats are Mobipocket, ePub, and PDF, all copy-protected.
Mobipocket books (a dwindling minority) can be read on a Kindle with the help of some scripts to tweak the files. DRM-ed ePubs and PDFs can be read on ADE-compatible readers (Nook/Sony/Kobo/etc.).
In order to get Mobi books on an ADE-reader and ePubs/PDFs onto a Kindle, you'd need to remove the DRM and convert.
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I think that, given that you want a search function and your budget is around $150, either a Nook or Kindle Wi-Fi-only model would suit you best out of all the e-ink readers (unless you're okay with LCD screens, in which case there are some useful budget-priced devices that I'm sure people will be happy to advise you upon).
Sonys have nifty features, but tend to be quite a bit pricier, and the Kobo is nice but very basic in functionality.
If it weren't for the file format issue, I'd say that the Kindle probably offers the better set of reader supplementary features (user-swappable dictionaries, text-to-speech, exportable highlights and notes) out of the two.
But the Nook really has greater overall compatibility with other vendors and e-book sources and formats whereas the Kindle does rather limit you in that area.
You'll have more shopping/borrowing options with the Nook or any ADE-DRM compatible reader overall, but likely greater convenience and customer service with Amazon, which is generally quite good at responding to issues and will allow you to return an e-book purchase within 7 days for any reason.
However, if you're willing and able to learn to remove DRM (a process which we cannot discuss in detail on this forum because it's considered to be of varying legality in many places), then your reading device is no longer a limiting factor; although ePub is technically capable of more advanced typographical display than Mobipocket is and sometimes you lose stuff during the conversion process.
But sometimes people find this to be confusing or uncomfortable or just too much hassle, so if you think that may be you, then a native ePub-supporting reader is probably your best choice.
For what it's worth, it's easier to remove the various DRM schemes associated with the ePub file formats than the ones for Kindle.
And Kobo often works out to have the best deals overall for Canadians, given the frequent discount coupons they offer which are applicable to most of their store, although Amazon usually has the steepest temporary price drops on selected sale titles.
Hope this helps, and welcome to MobileRead!