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This from my partner in Germany this morning:
***I notice that there still seem to be a couple of issues they’ve not properly sorted. For example, it can only be ordered and shipped from the US Amazon store, which means that it arrives with a US plug (although capable of charging from a 240v supply, the customer must still buy an additional plug adaptor), must be paid for in US dollars, is subject to customs duties and import taxes, and only has a one year warranty, which I believe is contrary to EU law. Plus, the newer DX version is not yet announced for international sale.
According to the Amazon publisher site, there have been no changes to the regulations about setting up content in the Kindle Store; still require a US presence, tax ID and bank account. Surely that must be against some kind of competition law though, since it means that, in 99 countries of the world, they are offering content for sale from the US, but barring sales of content from that home country. I guess that is one reason why they still only have the US Kindle store; start offering localised stores, and they’d have to also offer rights to local publishers. (ie. Maybe the argument is that, by buying from the US Kindle store even whilst outside the US, their purchases are actually made “in” the USA).***
On the subject of connectivity in Scotland where one of my associate editors (based in Canada) spends a few months of the year, he had this to say:
***Must have taken an army of lawyers to sort out this agreement with every mobile network owner in a hundred countries. Then again, I’m sure Amazon can afford it. Surprised about Canada though.
According to the network coverage map on site, although the 3G service is only available as far north as the major Scottish cities, you can still get EDGE/GPRS coverage even in the highlands. This is slower, but is still compatible with the Kindle. The reason is that the 3G antennae are relatively new and very expensive, and only have a small coverage footprint, but EDGE/GPRS technology uses the old-style antennae network which has been in place for many years now, and they have a much wider coverage.***
Hope some of this is useful here. Cheers. Neil
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