Books in Swedish on Amazon this Spring?

[owly]

Amazon is in the last stages of negotiation and want to start selling books in Swedish the first quarter of 2014. http://www.kristianstadsbladet.se/ku...-utmaning.html

What people aren't writing about is how this will effect how Swedes read ebooks. Ebookreaders are still uncommon here, I get calls from little old ladies who buy ipads just to read on, but if if Kindles start selling that would REALLY get the ebook reader market going.

[Kumabjorn]

I've noticed that most e-Books on loan no longer offers a MOBI version. Sounds like a counter move against Amazon. Dito and Adlibris offers books in ePub, so in essence it is already a de facto standard. Amazon has some inertia to overcome, but a PWII at 699 SEK might just do that.

[MichelleLouring]

I really hope they start selling in Sweden soon, mostly because I live in Denmark and an Amazon Kindle store in Sweden would mean one might come to Denmark soon enough.
It's true that ebooks are very rare in Scandinavia(I still get people asking me what ebooks are if I mention them), so it would be nice to have something kickstart the market here.
Plus, I'm tired of paying huge fees for ebooks, just because I'm forced to buy them at Amazon.com.

[Kumabjorn]

Why do you feel you pay "huge fees" for e-books? I find them generally reasonably priced and with the Daily Kindle Deals there are a lot of bargains being made out there.

[sadowski]

On the contrary--I would dare to say that ebooks in Sweden have come a long way already. Maybe not so much with respect to sales figures and perhaps prices. But definitively with respect to availability. Since a number of years (I have followed it since 2008), virtually all new releases and more and more books from the backlists are immediately available as DRM-free epubs for purchase, and with some months delay free from the library as well. Really for free at no cost, all books, two per customer per week for a loan time of four weeks, fully paid via taxes.

Thus, Amazon will mostly add price wars, format wars, and DRM to the Swedish ebook market. Pick what you like for yourself, I hope it will not be too easy for them.

[MichelleLouring]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

Why do you feel you pay "huge fees" for e-books? I find them generally reasonably priced and with the Daily Kindle Deals there are a lot of bargains being made out there.

The ebooks themselves are reasonably priced, but if I want to buy a cheap ebook I often get to pay twice as much because Amazon won't let me buy at any of the European stores and charges a fee for letting non-US customers download.
I publish on Amazon as well and had to buy a copy of one of my own short stories to check formatting. It was priced at $0.99, but I had to pay more than $3 for it. That's the reason I would like a local Amazon site instead

[owly]

MichelleLouring, have you tried converting epubs to AZW format with the program Calibre? it is easy to do and that way you have a wider price choice.

[MichelleLouring]

Originally Posted by owly

MichelleLouring, have you tried converting epubs to AZW format with the program Calibre? it is easy to do and that way you have a wider price choice.

I don't really need the AZW format, as I use reading apps on my tablet, phone or computer instead of a Kindle. I rarely buy on Amazon anymore anyway, looking to Smashwords instead(since most of the ebooks I buy are self-published titles).
That being said, I would be willing to buy ebooks at Amazon again if I could get the same price as everyone else!
Weirdly enough, I have to buy my paper books at the co.uk site, but ebooks at .com.

[tompe]

I really hope this does not reduce the number of English book titles we are allowed to buy. But I really will buy Swedish books from Amazon. I have the latest Letto (or what it is called) but I do not like to read on it at all compared to my PW. And I am to lazy to convert books so I mostly read Letto-books from Adlibris on my phone. But the Swedish books I might want is usually very expensive so I usually do not buy them.

[Kumabjorn]

Is it my library or are e-books now limited to two a month? (4 weeks to be precise)

[Heim]

God nyhet! For all Swedish speakers out there.

I hope the Dutch(-speaking) market is next.

[owly]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

Is it my library or are e-books now limited to two a month? (4 weeks to be precise)

It's your library. A lot of Swedish libraries have been cutting down the amount of ebooks people get to borrow per week. My library cut down from five to three.