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***They will undoubtedly get UK publishers "on board" as time goes on, and improve the selection***
My own small indie publishing house is UK registered, Harry, and we're told that
Amazon -- which carries all our paperbacks, but not the digital versions since Kindle first launched -- still has no plans to start selling ebooks from publishers without a registered US presence; tax and social security numbers, US banking and landmail address and what have you.
To give Amazon some due, this is partly a bureaucratic hitch (which they could get around if they tried, I guess). Thing is with treebooks is that point of sale is agreed as Seattle, though not all treebooks are actually sent from there; in fact, Amazon orders are often filled direct from UK print shops and distributors and never have to cross the shining big sea water. With ebooks, though, governments say point of sale is actually your PC or the actual location from which an order is placed and an ebook downloaded.
(This is why Amazon makes a big song and dance about their two dollar cover price loading in the UK "including VAT". Actually, as Amazon proved when it withdrew books from Kindle owners in the US, ebooks are not 'purchases' but 'licences' and are taxed -- not as 'goods' at 19% as the Amazon loading seems to reflect, but as 'services', which carry only 6% VAT. Where does the other buck and a half go?
Anyway ... the point of sale issue means that some larger publishers can (and Amazon must) slap geographical restrictions on many titles. Doesn't apply to my own BeWrite Books because we publish in a single international edition -- sans frontier. We're just caught in the big boys' crossfire.
Cheers. Neil
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