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Synopsis:
Starting next Wednesday, Amazon will start selling e-readers, 20.000 books in Dutch, and 3 million books in other languages in The Netherlands. Amazon hopes to be able to make a difference regarding their devices and apps functionality, as they think they will not be able to lower the price of e-books in The Netherlands. "Normally, the price of a book is decided by the publisher or the author," says Amazon.
This will put Amazon in a very different position towards publishers, compared with the US, where Amazon is now fighting Hachette regarding e-book pricing. "Dutch publishers are modern, and have embraced digital reading, so negotiations went well, compared to other countries," says Ezequiel Szafir.
Amazon will be selling around 20K books in Dutch; less than Bol.com, who is working together with Kobo, selling around 30K titles in Dutch. Amazon does sell a lot more titles in other languages; 3 million vs. 2 million. Almost 60% of Dutch e-books in the Netherlands are sold by Bol.com.
Amazon will sell three Kindles:
Kindle Basic, €59.
Kindle Paperwhite, €109 (temporarily; later €129)
Kindle Voyage, €189
Books sold by Amazon can only be read on the Kindle. However, Dutch stores now normally sell EPUB ooks protected by a watermark only, which will make them readable on all (EPUB) devices and apps.
It's not yet clear if other parts of Amazon, such as clothes an physical goods will be brought over to the Netherlands.