Not in USA and fed up?

[Quoth]

Websites posting special offers: Except only in USA.
That book you wanted? Only on Kindle and only in USA?

Except you don't live in the USA.

Amazon lets you buy most things from any marketplace. Irish people often use the German one as shipping is often the same as from UK and there is an English option. It's also in Euro, which Ireland uses. Amazon insists Irish people use the UK marketplace which is in Sterling.

There is some logic to Amazon's madness, especially when it is books (Amazon's original market), CDs, DVDs and Games. Ireland is regarded as part of UK by publishers and "Rights Agreements". Also for over a 100 years and still today Ireland is dominated by UK retailers and Irish retail often supplied by UK Wholesale. We suffer from Currency Hedging.

SOLUTION
Buy a cheapest kindle (new or better is an older S/H to avoid KFX).
Have an email address not used for Amazon that works.
Buy that email address a gift voucher (£1 works) using your normal email account.
Optionally have a web browser for this email address never used for Amazon with your main account. You need that to buy books & download to PC and transfer via USB under "manage my devices".
Calibre.

Enable Wireless and create the account on the secondary Kindle via register. Write down password BEFORE entry. Some random letters, numbers and phrase.
Enter the voucher number instead of a credit card. You MUST enter one or the other.
You may need to select Register a second time and enter the email & password you used.
Switch off the Wireless.

Now Collections work!
Now you can go to Amazon.com (on a browser never used for your original normal Amazon account). You can select a free book to test. If it says it will be delivered wirelessly, then go to Account, and manage devices & Content, click on ... at the book and select Download to PC and transfer via USB.

Next add a suitable plugin to remove DRM (Legal most countries outside USA as long as you never upload or give copies of the book to anyone). It needs the serial number of your cheap or old Kindle you obtained.

Import the downloaded ebook and now you can read it on your main Kindle, or even a Kobo, Nook, Sony etc.
Or if you don't have an eink based reader you might want to read it on the old or cheap kindle you bought.

[Quoth]

Obviously if you have children and want them to have their own Kindles you can use the method above in any marketplace, ideally your own, if you first create an email address for them. Then you can purchase a gift voucher for that email address, though I think Amazon recently added "Gift" Kindle ebooks. This means you can delete the WiFi password before giving it to the child, preventing Web Browsing. You then download and transfer ebooks via USB for the child, using a gift voucher for payment each time.

Note some so called ebooks don't work on actual eink Kindles, or maybe not on older ones but only on Kindle Apps (or the Fire, which is really a crippled "locked to Amazon" Android tablet with a pre-installed Kindle App). This was a really stupid decision by Amazon. Some Authors / Publishers have used some of these "advanced" formats not to have interactive or images but simply to mimic paper layouts in an ebook, thus cutting themselves off from many customers. When will some people learn that ebooks are not meant to duplicate paper or imitate PDFs?

[Deskisamess]

The ability to gift Kindle books has been in place for years. It was a USA only thing for a long time, and it still is limited to certain countries. And you can't gift a book from the US site to another country's site.

Note some so called ebooks don't work on actual eink Kindles, or maybe not on older ones but only on Kindle Apps (or the Fire, which is really a crippled "locked to Amazon" Android tablet with a pre-installed Kindle App).

This isn't really correct. There are Print Replica Kindle books, which are usually textbooks, or books with mathematical symbols etc which won't render well or correctly on small e-ink screens. They generally work on color devices with larger screens, like the Fires, or via the Kindle app on Android or iOS devices. Books with color photos, or maps, etc. also do not always look great on a small greyscale screen, again, due to the nature of the screens.

This has nothing to do with Amazon locking you to them. It has to do with the formatting of the books, which is decided on and handled by the publisher, and is many times due to the features and content of the book itself.

I've been using Kindles since 2009, and read a variety of fiction and non-fiction, and have never run into this issue. The vast majority of Kindle books work just fine on an e-ink screen.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

The ability to gift Kindle books has been in place for years.

It was a USA only thing for a long time,

Most of the world lives outside the USA. People have friends & relatives in different countries. Especially Irish people?

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

This isn't really correct. There are Print Replica Kindle books, which are usually textbooks, or books with mathematical symbols etc which won't render well or correctly on small e-ink screens. They generally work on color devices with larger screens, like the Fires, or via the Kindle app on Android or iOS devices. Books with color photos, or maps, etc. also do not always look great on a small greyscale screen, again, due to the nature of the screens.

I'm not talking about textbooks or stuff that is poor on real eink Kindles. I'm talking about books found searching under Kindle and can't even be bought except for a Kindle App (the Fire is a tablet with an App). It's stupid. They need a Non-Kindle electronic document category.

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

This has nothing to do with Amazon locking you to them. It has to do with the formatting of the books, which is decided on and handled by the publisher, and is many times due to the features and content of the book itself.

I explained, or attempted to, that there is a stupid historic "rights" issue. Partly Cartel based as Publishers agreed in the 20th C. to carve up the world. Exclusivity on regional rights on physical items, DVDs, Games, BluRay, CDs, Streaming, ebooks, etc is exploitive abuse of the consumer and where the item is unavailable in some regions doubly evil. I'm opposed to "Piracy" (Copyright Violation). Such regional "divide and conquer" things are immoral except where there is a regulatory or safety reason such as mains plugs, electricity types, side of the road for driving etc. The Common Market (now the EU) was created for two main reasons, one was peace in Europe and the other was to protect consumers from such abuse.

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

I've been using Kindles since 2009, and read a variety of fiction and non-fiction, and have never run into this issue. The vast majority of Kindle books work just fine on an e-ink screen.

This is irrelevant. There are Kindle books which are only sold for Apps. I've bought them (for Android/PC app) and discovered in every case they were only text. Exporting as RTF, reformatting and recreating as Mobi / AZW3 / ePub they then work perfectly.
There are other so called "Kindle eBooks" which are only suitable for PC Screen or Tablets, not even for large colour phones. You admit earlier that text books are one example. The Kindle DX by the way was a failure, designed for education use, because text books do not work well on ANY ebook reader, even if a colour tablet. They need to be especially designed, not a copy of a paper edition. Also you need FAR better ereader software than I've ever seen. Bookmarks and Home Screen "in use books" isn't enough, never mind how abysmal annotation export is.
I've been using electronic documents since before PDFs (they started in 1990s) and ebooks since about 2005 (programs on PC and also exporting as paginated HTML with JS navigation to a 6" Personal Media Player).

Ebook readers are OK but the document management features of any ereader and even ereader apps on Tablets are dreadful.


Anyway, the OP was about how to get ebooks WITHOUT PIRACY that are unavailable in your own region. When people can't buy, some will "pirate."

I've mentioned in passing that Amazon uniquely (AFAIAK) sells things that are not real ebooks (i.e. incompatible with ANY real ebook reader, a Fire or other Tablet isn't an ebook reader, it's a Tablet with an App). This is a stupid decision on Amazon's part. Actually I suspect because eink is far more expensive than LCD, that it's only the existence of competing eink and similar readers that keeps real Kindles on the market. There is a reason why no other eink reader can read Amazon DRM kindle ebooks and Amazon doesn't sell ePub. They already sell 90% of ebooks. That's disturbing. Barnes & Noble, Kobo shop & Harlequin etc are trying to be restrictive in different stupid ways (hidden partition only, proprietary kepub, no ereaders!). Smashwords is sane.

[Quoth]

Mainly I registered the Kindle so I could create Collections. Obviously the default country is the USA if you register via the Kindle.
However a Gift voucher paid for via an account on Amazon.co.uk could only be redeemed on Amazon.co.uk. It appears as a balance there but is non-existent on Amazon.com. Then I added my USA address (which hitherto was unknown to Amazon), but while the UK and US marketplaces agree physical stuff goes to USA, the gift voucher balance is only on the UK marketplace, amazon.co.uk, seriously weird for people with friends or relatives on a different "marketplace". Actually I've been set Amazon gift vouchers from people in the UK, but then Amazon pretends Ireland is in the UK when it suits them, very often though physical items CAN'T be delivered to Ireland and you get no indication until you pay for "basket". I've had to then use Amazon Germany or ebay or an Amazon UK reseller (for the exact same thing Amazon will only deliver to the UK address). Very bad software that search gives results that can be added to basket and can't be shipped even though you are logged in.

So anyway, like Kobo, you can register a Kindle with no physical address and no credit card. With no address entered each market place seems to think you are local to them, even though for eBooks it seems to be in the USA.

[newkindlefun]

I'm not in the US and I buy books, use the Kindle as normal, enter ebook givaways, have collections... I just use a fake US address on Amazon and my actual credit card from my country.

I tried to read this three times to figure out if you're solving for something else here, but it sounds confusing.
Is there anything else you're solving with this complex method?

[Quoth]

OK, I researched this so you don't have to!
From Quora:
"An Amazon gift card is only valid for the Amazon store that it is assigned to. So a gift card for Amazon.co.uk for example, will not work with Amazon.com"

From Amazon.co.uk

2. Limitations

Gift Cards, including any unused Gift Card balances, expire ten years from the date of issuance. Gift Cards may not be redeemed for the purchase of products at www.amazon.at, www.amazon.com.br, www.amazon.ca, www.amazon.cn, www.amazon.com, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.es, www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.in, www.amazon.it, www.amazon.co.jp, www.amazon.com.mx, or any other website owned and operated by us, our affiliates, or any other person or entity, except as indicated by these terms and conditions. Gift Cards cannot be used to purchase other gift cards, or as payment for a Prime membership fee. Gift Cards cannot be reloaded, resold, transferred for value or redeemed for cash. Unused Gift Card balances in an Amazon.co.uk account may not be transferred to another Amazon.co.uk account.

Very weasel language. There is NO warning anywhere that gift cards / vouchers are not transferable between market places. An experiment that's wasted £1, sort of, EXCEPT that when registering the Kindle, entering the Gift Card code allows completion of registration without entering payment card (Credit or Debit card)!

[Quoth]

So further research:
1) You can buy a gift card on a different marketplace to your own home address.
2) You MUST buy the gift card on the marketplace that the recipient has their address / Kindle.
3) Amazon will work with no credit card details entered at all, but the sales tax is extra on top of ebook price in USA, in EU/UK it's included in eBook price. You need enough balance on the gift to cover the sales tax (7c on a 99c book). Perhaps it depends which State your USA Address is? You don't need any address or gift card for amazon.com free ebooks which might not exist on other Amazon marketplaces (Mostly the Publisher decides).

Also it's the Publisher, not Amazon that decides if there is DRM or not. The Lending is more complex as Amazon may force publishers to allow it depending on "Stuff"!

[crane3]

The subject of sales taxes depend on the "gps" location. e.g. a few years back someone sued Walmart for 'criminal' activity for overcharging sales tax. The problem is that most places sales tax is charge based on the zipcode of the business; however the particular Walmart location was in the county rather than the city which had a higher tax. That Walmart zipcode location covered the town & part of the county; Walmart charged the salestax governed by the town...........

Sales taxes in the USA is depended on a governing agency of the location of a business selling the product; and not necessarily the state or county or city as utility companies cross zipareas like water companies, etc.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by FrustratedReader

Perhaps it depends which State your USA Address is?

There are also some counties, cities and other local governments that collect additional sales tax depending on where you live in some states. Sales tax can get complicated in the US.

[janrey]

Originally Posted by crane3

The subject of sales taxes depend on the "gps" location. e.g. a few years back someone sued Walmart for 'criminal' activity for overcharging sales tax. The problem is that most places sales tax is charge based on the zipcode of the business; however the particular Walmart location was in the county rather than the city which had a higher tax. That Walmart zipcode location covered the town & part of the county; Walmart charged the salestax governed by the town...........

Sales taxes in the USA is depended on a governing agency of the location of a business selling the product; and not necessarily the state or county or city as utility companies cross zipareas like water companies, etc.

Sales tax when I order from Amazon no matter where I order it from is based on my zip code not GPS or Amazon's location. I can order from home, my friend house in another state, or in another country and still will be charged the sales tax based on my physical address, even if I ship it somewhere else (like my friend's house).

[removed]

[Barbara1955]

When I was a Kid living in Virginia my mom would complain every year.... Car Tags. City sticker to prove she paid car tax To the City then there was a County sticker she had to buy to prove she paid county tax! Since the city was also part of county then it also depended on which part of the city your current address was in....sheesh The old saying is you have to paid for Death & Taxes! But mom always said Taxes will Kill her! Then we moved to WV all that extra was gone! Didn't matter where in the state you lived...all you had to pay was Personal tax & Tags!

[Barbara1955]

FrustratedReader This may explain whats going on.... Amazon has no control over BUT IF you contact them & explain the problem I betting they Get with the Current market.... https://www.bbc.com/news/business-36611512

[HarryT]

I've never considered not living in the US to be a problem that required a solution. Amazon UK's range of ebooks is at least as good as that of Amazon US.