My take on the Kindle Store (AU Customer) :(

[SpirosGyrosAU]

Hello,

I've just purchased a Kindle3 WIFI edition in Australia and I'm extremely annoyed with the AU Kindle Store and what is provides book readers.

The titles I want to purchase aren't on the AU Kindle Store but they reside on either the UK or the US Kindle Store.

If I wanted a book traditionally, I would purchase it through Amazon and it would get delivered to me from wherever the book was printed, and I would gladly pay the additional fee to have it transported to me so I could read it.

I've modernised my bookshelf by purchasing the Kindle3 but now I'm finding I can't purchase the titles I'd like to read which means I will have to revert to traditional practices in order to the read the titles I want therefore rendering the Kindle3 useless as I can't totally digitise my whole library of books.

To me, this is taking us a step back in the digital era instead of a step forward, where we aren't (shouldn't be) limited by boundaries, instead the vision I thought would be shared would be to provide us with a universal Kindle Store instead of using the 'copyright' message to limit us in our reading.

I understand not all books have been digitised yet but why not offer the entire Kindle Store to all of it's users - aside from books that could possibly be banned in specific countries for a specific reason i.e. political, etc.?

Wouldn't the Kindle ebook purchase fee go towards the publishers/authors anyway (with Amazon receicing a small percentage)?

As far as I can tell, there are still two distinct readers in this world; ones that only love to read a paperback/hardback book and ones that would like to go for the digitised version.

Why stop the second class of people from realising the true potential of an ebook reader instead of forcing them to opt for a 'kuazi' traditional / digital reading model.

What are your thoughts?

Are there any other ebook stores you could recommend me so I can purchase my books from there (which could be converted to a format to be read on my Kindle3)?

An unsatisfied customer,

SG

[Solicitous]

Welcome to the world of Geographic Restrictions. I wont re-iterate what it is, but a quick search on this forum will show many a discussion on the topic. Chances are if Amazon wont sell the ebook to you, then no other ebook store has the rights to sell to Australian's either. It doesn't make sense but it is what the publishers themselves are enforcing. Amazon and other ebookstores would love to sell us any ebook we would want, but unfortunately they are being told which countries certain ebook titles can be sold to.

[xnowimcoolx]

I don't mean to be rude but I have a hard time feeling sympathetic. The internet gives people NO excuse for writing comments like this on any forum. There are countless forums, chat rooms, and websites devoted to e-readers and discussion on them. A week in this forum before buying the device would have saved you the headache (I noticed you joined today ... just to rant?) You had every opportunity to do the due diligence before buying the device but you obviously didn't.

Return it. Amazon has a good return policy.

I'm done my rant now.

To actually help with your rant there are DRM-stripping option available if you find a store that sells more books than Amazon in your region. And there is Calibre, which will do a good job of converting them into the proper format.

Or you could choose the evil method...

[Blue Tyson]

Short answer: their contract and content management is stuck in a time long ago and far away.

On books :-

Amazon has the most. Note that sometimes you search and come up with a book and it says not available - there may be a pommie version for example that is. Sometimes this will be listed as 'kindle version' in the list of formats, even though you are _already_ looking at a kindle version. So you can click on that to see. Another way to check is to search the 'All departments' option. If you just search the Kindle store it can be dodgy, as they limit the searches by geography - even if that is not always right.

You can look at kobobooks.com or readwithoutpaper.com or borders.com.au - but there will be a much smaller selection and higher prices, generally. And the search engines for some of them are truly wretched.

Some at Fictionwise.com, as well. Worth a look for some older work.

Basically, the media companies have never been interested in providing a large range of product to Australia in timely fashion - and probably never will until made to do so out of necessity.

e.g. the complete balls-up they made of Pay TV as a prime example.

Historically the Northern Hemisphere bunch have been able to get away with charging us a significantly higher price even taking into account transport etc. and pocketing the difference.

However, bad luck for them is digital knows no geography. Hence we became world-leading per capita downloaders of tv, music etc especially given our relatively poor bandwidth and prices of such. The publishing arms of said conglomerates are looking to try and get us to match that for books, too, with their recent behaviour.

[Blue Tyson]

Originally Posted by Solicitous

Welcome to the world of Geographic Restrictions. I wont re-iterate what it is, but a quick search on this forum will show many a discussion on the topic. Chances are if Amazon wont sell the ebook to you, then no other ebook store has the rights to sell to Australian's either. It doesn't make sense but it is what the publishers themselves are enforcing. Amazon and other ebookstores would love to sell us any ebook we would want, but unfortunately they are being told which countries certain ebook titles can be sold to.

Usually that is right, but sometimes books are available at kobo and not at Amazon - found a few today, for example.

[Blue Tyson]

Originally Posted by xnowimcoolx

I don't mean to be rude but I have a hard time feeling sympathetic. The internet gives people NO excuse for writing comments like this on any forum. There are countless forums, chat rooms, and websites devoted to e-readers and discussion on them. A week in this forum before buying the device would have saved you the headache (I noticed you joined today ... just to rant?) You had every opportunity to do the due diligence before buying the device but you obviously didn't.

Return it. Amazon has a good return policy.

I'm done my rant now.

To actually help with your rant there are DRM-stripping option available if you find a store that sells more books than Amazon in your region. And there is Calibre, which will do a good job of converting them into the proper format.

Or you could choose the evil method...

So, Amazon will pay for to ship the item back FROM AUSTRALIA then? If not, this is a somewhat useless suggestion.

If you think mobileread is not for discussing problems with technology and content acquisition in ereading you clearly haven't been paying attention.

[Blue Tyson]

And welcome, Spiros.

Always good to have more aussies.

If you feel like it, you could log the books you cannot buy here :-

http://lostbooksales.com/

It might help with the annoyance!

[thinkpad]

Hi and welcome to Mobileread, SpirosGyrosAU.

A lot of us are in the same situation as you. Not living in the US means constant hassle with geo-restrictions especially since the Agency model took place.

There are however ways around these geo-restrictions. Somewhat cumbersome at times and requires some work from your part with registering a fake address and using a VPN.

Smashwords and Baen are two book-stores that will gladly accept your money and give you options as to what format to download.

[Jcas]

This is an annoyance i too can relate too, really bugged me in the beginning, but it is now something i learn to live with or find a way round it.

Google is your friend.

[nohmi2]

I can really relate to your complaints.

Having said that, Google really is your friend.

Cheers.

[Pushka]

This simply isnt Amazon's fault. They would love to sell you the books. Blame our stupid Australian publishers and the stranglehold they have over geographic restrictions and the like. Think Murdoch et al.

[desertgrandma]

Welcome to MobileRead, SpirosGyrosAU.

Amazon would like nothing better than to offer its entire catalog world wide.......think of the money they would make!

The people you need to be angry at are the publishers, who set the geo restrictions.

That being said, as has already been said here, there are workarounds. Good luck.

[wudge]

I am a week time reader of this forum (just bought my kindle 1 week ago). Just registered today to specifically answer your question, as I once was an unsatisfied customer like you myself. I mean here I was ready to spend money and I couldn't!!

is it a taboo to explain the way around it or legality issue? I know those who replied "google is your friend" knows how, but why not elaborate?

1. make a new email address with US address
2. register new amazon account with the new email address
3. register your credit card and put some US address on it (google some pizza joint address in some US city)
4. buy yourself amazon gift certificate
5. spend your gift certificate to buy books

and bundle your new account to your kindle, next time you browse kindle store with your kindle you can buy or subscribe to any books or newspapers, magazine you can find in the store.

hope it helps.

edit: please inform me if my post is not convenient to say.. i'll delete it

[Blue Tyson]

No, nothing wrong with that.

Something else implied of course is that you can see if you can find the books you want to buy but can't for free. By using said search engines as one possibility.

[ProfCrash]

Originally Posted by wudge

I am a week time reader of this forum (just bought my kindle 1 week ago). Just registered today to specifically answer your question, as I once was an unsatisfied customer like you myself. I mean here I was ready to spend money and I couldn't!!

is it a taboo to explain the way around it or legality issue? I know those who replied "google is your friend" knows how, but why not elaborate?

1. make a new email address with US address
2. register new amazon account with the new email address
3. register your credit card and put some US address on it (google some pizza joint address in some US city)
4. buy yourself amazon gift certificate
5. spend your gift certificate to buy books

and bundle your new account to your kindle, next time you browse kindle store with your kindle you can buy or subscribe to any books or newspapers, magazine you can find in the store.

hope it helps.

edit: please inform me if my post is not convenient to say.. i'll delete it

That is fine. There are other options that are not.

Take a look in this area. You should find instructions on how to set up an American account so you can access all the books you want. The one step I see missing in the above discussion is using a proxy server to mask your IP address.