Guardian: No Kindle for the UK (or anywhere else outside US)

[Tom90deg]

I may be remembering this wrong, but some countries, I'm thinking of the UK here, have very diffrent laws and rules regarding publishing. I don't remember the total details, but I believe it's something to do with Slander laws. That may be a reason why they're so hesitant.

I do agree with the cell phone company reason though. I'll bet that'd be a nightmare.

[Mindy]

Originally Posted by Tom90deg

I believe it's something to do with Slander laws. That may be a reason why they're so hesitant.

I don't think so, since in Scotland at least there's no such thing as slander; cases are brought as defamation and relates to the damaging effects of the relevant statement. The only defence is to prove that what you said/wrote about the person was true.
Could be something to do with intellectual property law (copyright would be a subset)
(Guess what I studied at Uni? LOL)

I still maintain they're just being cheap, mean and stupid.

[HarryT]

But no US eBook store OTHER than Amazon has a problem with selling to customers anywhere in the world. I'm in the UK, and buy virtually all my eBooks either from Baen or from Fictionwise, both of whom are in the US.

[Mindy]

Mwahahaha, can answer that one too!
Any sale is a contract (automatically) and the terms of the contract will usually dictate which legal jurisdication will apply in the case of any dispute. Would bet it's in terms and conditions, even for free downloads.
That's why in the UK you have a 'statutory right' to return goods within 14 days as long as they are in the same condition in which you received them; dictated by a very old Act (described by my Contract professor as 'sex on legs').

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Mindy

3. If they leave it too long, it's a greater risk that there will be more competition in the market or, even more likely, people will already have committed to another device and built up a relationship with another company. At that point they would have to produce something exceptional to 'win over' the target audience to further expenditure on a new device.

In a word: Good.

In a few other words: That would be the chance to get ePub and appropriate conversion SW out there for any and all devices, and give Amazon a run for its money.

[pilotbob]

Didn't Jeff Bezos in a very recent interview state that they did plan to release Kindle outside of the US at some point in time?

BOb

[vivaldirules]

This is most disturbing to read. Thanks for the post, Argel. I hope this changes and we see these devices and ebooks for them sold and supported globally soon.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Didn't Jeff Bezos in a very recent interview state that they did plan to release Kindle outside of the US at some point in time?

BOb

But the fact that they "plan" to do so doesn't mean that they will do.

I "plan" to win next week's lottery and spend the rest of my life in luxury. Unfortunately the plan may not come to fruition .

"Plan" is a "weasel word" that can mean absolutely nothing.

[Walk Broad]

Originally Posted by bbusybookworm

As to how difficult it would be to swap it out would probably depend upon how the module was designed. If it was a standard mini PCMCIA or similar design, it would be a piece of cake. The harder part would be to program it for using multiple different networks.

I think it has more to do with the cellular tech that is slowing it down than Amazon not wanting to sell to as many people as possible.

It took the Apple many months to negotiate the iPhone release with Steve Jobs flying all over Europe talking to various head honchos and probably having the iPhone subjected to a number of test.

Switching from the CDMA Sprint system to the more global standard of GSM may not be as easy as we think.

Plus, since Amazon has a UK division, it would be hard for me to imagine them NOT wanting to sell the Kindle there.

There may be a whole lot of behind-the-scenes hoops to jump through so they don't have to make two versions of the same device (with the subsequent support required) that may be causing the delay.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by HarryT

But the fact that they "plan" to do so doesn't mean that they will do.

I "plan" to win next week's lottery and spend the rest of my life in luxury. Unfortunately the plan may not come to fruition .

"Plan" is a "weasel word" that can mean absolutely nothing.

My point was, this guys says "no plans" and Jeff B says "plans" ... sure plans aren't the same as released, however, I was just pointing out the descrepency in the stated plans or lack thereof.

BOb

[Ebook lover]

It seems like Jeff Bezos has big plans for Kindle, (or else he won't be going to American Expo showing off his Kindle), so I think Amazon will release their device to other markets once everything is in place.

[bbusybookworm]

Originally Posted by Walk Broad

I think it has more to do with the cellular tech that is slowing it down than Amazon not wanting to sell to as many people as possible.

It took the Apple many months to negotiate the iPhone release with Steve Jobs flying all over Europe talking to various head honchos and probably having the iPhone subjected to a number of test.

There may be a whole lot of behind-the-scenes hoops to jump through so they don't have to make two versions of the same device (with the subsequent support required) that may be causing the delay.

Actually in the case of Apple, I believe that the big problem was the revenue sharing model. Apple wanted a cut of each months revenue, and the carriers were a bit leery of doing so.

Also, the tech problem was more on apple side. With most networks in Europe having gone to 3g, and with limited public wifi access the holdup was probably to negotiate with the wi-fi providers, who were often rival cell phone companies .

As for different models for different markets, think one of the companies developing the cellphone chips has a a dual CDMA/GSM chip and is marketing it in Japan/Korea.

So if amazon can get that into the kindle, they could possibly ship the same hardware worldwide, just changing the SIM for different markets. (some Newer CDMA phones also come with SIM cards)

[cstross]

There are multiple problems with launching Kindle in Europe. Let me enumerate:

1. Hardware. There's no CDMA network here. They'd need to switch to either GSM or UMTS (3G). My money is on 3G because although GSM is a cheap/mature technology, it's slow; downloading a 1Mb novel onto a cellphone (or a Kindle) is sluggish, running at modem speeds (5-10 minutes). That might be acceptable in and of itself, but what about web browsing, or indeed, browsing the Kindle store? If it's too sluggish, that would render it unattractive to users. So I suspect they need a cheap low-power UMTS chipset before they can consider building a World Kindle.

2. Carriers. The various national arms of the big cellcos like T-Mobile or Vodafone don't interoperate well -- they're effectively separate national cellcos. Amazon would have to strike a deal with potentially as many as 25 cellco subsidiaries/operating units in order to get Kindle to work throughout the EU.

3. Language. English is not the majority language in the EU; while there are probably 80 million people who speak it as effectively a first language (I'm including the Netherlands along with the UK and Ireland), and another 120 million who have it as a second language, Kindle would flop in the non-English areas without access to local language material.

4. Rights. The rights to publish ebooks are sold as a subsidiary right to the right to publish paper-books, on a territorial basis, and in the English language world, these rights are frequently split between UK & Commonwealth and USA & Canada. Which means it would be actionable for US publishers to allow some of their titles to be sold outside North America. This is probably what's holding up the Sony Store in my view, and it's going to cause royal headaches for Amazon if they try to launch Kindle in Europe, because suddenly they can't use those 125,000 titles they've got in their US store -- they've got to talk to local publishers, or risk facing lawsuits.

If it was just any one or two of these obstacles, then I suspect Bezos would want to steamroller ahead anyway. But the combination of roadblocks makes for a formidable mountain to climb.

[cstross]

Now let me reverse my position and suggest how Amazon might launch the Kindle in Europe:

1. CDMA may be unavailable, but what about WiFi? Or WiMax? Nokia have just shoved a WiMax chipset in the N810, so they're out there already; a WiMax chipset with fallback to WiFi would probably do the job for Kindle in urban areas, and the EU is in general more heavily urbanized than the USA. Free Wifi is also becoming extremely common (at least in parts of the UK) as a local draw for pubs, bars, and cafes.

2. WiFi would allow them to launch right now, if the cellcos refuse to cooperate. Not ideal, but workable -- just use any hotspot. Alternatively, if they could reach a deal with a couple of the big WiFi hotspot providers (BT OpenZone or T-Mobile, maybe) that might be a workable alternative.

3. Target English first, add other languages progressively (as works become available).

4. Rights: I know that Hachette group (who are currently having a pissing match with Amazon.co.uk) have an overall worldwide ebooks strategy and are re-jigging their rights position so that they can provide the correct edition to the correct ebook market more or less on demand. I expect the other multinational publishers can't be far behind, if at all. Small local publishers will be a headache, but they're part of the long tail, and Kindle strategy differs from Amazon's overall strategy insofar as it isn't about monetizing the long tail -- it's about bootstrapping a whole new publishing sector. They can leave the small fry for later, in other words.