What is it with Amazon’s Kindle love affair?

[avantman42]

Originally Posted by Yapyap

I came across a lengthy thread on the KDP forums on Amazon the other day where several authors mentioned that there apparently is a new form available somewhere in the author area, which allows the author to contact Amazon service and pull out of KDP Select immediately if they don't wish to be enrolled to Kindle Unlimited.

That's quite interesting, thanks for that.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

And they account for what percent of worldwide ebook sales?

Why, all of it, of course.

[BillSmithBooks]

I would think an alternate approach would be to contact the authors (through contact info on Amazon or google them to find their blog or facebook or twitter) and request that they offer their books on other vendors that provide Epub format -- there are plenty of choices: Smashwords, B&N, Kobo, Itunes. Authors can create and offer your files through DriveThruFiction or Gumroad, too.

Smashwords and Gumroad are nice because they sell worldwide and allow customers to direct download the files to their devices instead of requiring a proprietary reader program or app.

Many authors stick to Amazon because it is easy and it is the dominant player. If they realize that being exclusive with just one vendor is costing them money, they may think about diversifying to other retailers.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Which makes epub a minority format.

In the US and UK.

In Europe, some countries don't even have an Amazon store, and then you need to get books from the US. Books not in English are hard to get at Amazon US. Even if a country has an Amazon store, getting books in your native language is often possible in EPUB only.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

In the US and UK.

In Europe, some countries don't even have an Amazon store, and then you need to get books from the US. Books not in English are hard to get at Amazon US. Even if a country has an Amazon store, getting books in your native language is often possible in EPUB only.

But then, maybe Amazon is satisfied with it's share of worldwide ebook sales and doesn't care if it locks out countries that won't significantly increase its market share.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

In the US and UK.

In Europe, some countries don't even have an Amazon store, and then you need to get books from the US. Books not in English are hard to get at Amazon US. Even if a country has an Amazon store, getting books in your native language is often possible in EPUB only.

Uh, does "hard to get" mean you can't buy them?


Cause finding them isn't hard for me:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=lp_15460...rnid=154606011

Foreign Languages
German (161,098)
Spanish (93,976)
French (52,321)
Italian (44,974)
Japanese (21,903)
Portuguese (24,324)
Chinese (3,589)
Other Languages (8,412)

And there is a long list of prominent authors to click on.

Do they filter by IP address?

Or maybe the local publishers don't want to deal?
Which would odd because Amazon Publishing is currently the biggest US publisher of translated foreign books.

I dunno about the other language sections but the Spanish section is pretty good.

http://www.amazon.com/Spanish-Kindle...rd_i=154606011

A bit overloaded on steamy romance but otherwise fine.

[Kumabjorn]

A lot of those books are Google Translate versions. Absolutely crap.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

A lot of those books are Google Translate versions. Absolutely crap.

Which ones? What language?
The spanish ones I've bought are legit... straight from the publisher.

[Kumabjorn]

The Swedish and Danish ones I have checked. The Spanish may be legit, I haven't looked at those. A lot of the Japanese titles are also suspect which really boggled me since Amazon has a Japanese store. Must be some sort of geo restriction I guess.

Maybe some other members could take a look and give us their impressions.

[Yapyap]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Uh, does "hard to get" mean you can't buy them?


Cause finding them isn't hard for me:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=lp_15460...rnid=154606011

The "Other Languages" section shows this:

Other Languages
Afrikaans (2,165)
Alsatian (18)
Arabic (1)
Basque (258)
Bulgarian (1)
Catalan (1,961)
Croatian (1)
Danish (357)
Dutch (807)
Galician (288)
Greek (3)
Hindi (68)
Hungarian (1)
Icelandic (151)
Irish (195)
Latin (14)
Luxembourgish (5)
Manx (11)
Norwegian (209)
Polish (2)
Provençal (5)
Russian (967)
Scots (22)
Scottish Gaelic (4)
Swahili (105)
Swedish (337)
Welsh (207)

In other words, many of the languages even listed have a handful to a dozen books, and this is a very short list as such, meaning that Amazon doesn't have a single Kindle book in the majority of languages spoken around the world (not even the majority of European languages).

Some of the large languages (those with an Amazon Kindle store of their own) do seem to have a reasonable representation, at least as far as numbers go, but without knowing those countries' book markets, I can't even begin to guess how well Amazon is actually doing compared to local epub bookshops.

[bevdeforges]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

In the US and UK.

In Europe, some countries don't even have an Amazon store, and then you need to get books from the US. Books not in English are hard to get at Amazon US. Even if a country has an Amazon store, getting books in your native language is often possible in EPUB only.

It really depends on what you're looking for. Amazon.fr sells Kindle books, including titles in English. But the English language selection is much better if you use Amazon.com - where they do seem to go by your shipping address (rather than IP) and add the appropriate VAT to the amounts in euros.

I keep getting "suggestions" from Amazon that I can buy Kindle books from their .fr site, but I choose not to. The choice of titles in other European languages appears to be quite a bit better at the French site, though mostly Spanish and Italian. (I have seen some Scandinavian and Dutch books, but usually only those titles originally written in those languages.)

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Uh, does "hard to get" mean you can't buy them?


Cause finding them isn't hard for me...

So Amazon has 161K German books?

So what? I wouldn't be surprised if there are 161K German books released EACH YEAR. In the Netherlands alone, 30K books are released, and Germany is like 6 times bigger in population.

Amazon's catalogs for non-English books are small compared to the EPUB retailers, at least the last time I looked. If you want Dutch books for example, you're MUCH better off at Kobo.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Amazon's catalogs for non-English books are small compared to the EPUB retailers, at least the last time I looked. If you want Dutch books for example, you're MUCH better off at Kobo.

I just wanted clarification, is all. Because there is a difference between certain books being hidden (hard to find) and the selection being limited in certain categories.

The first speaks to the organization of the ebookstore (where Amazon is generally above average) while the other has many possible explanations, mostly related to harsh economic realities.

[Geralt]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Russia and Japan are two countries where ePub is king.

I don't think so for Japan.
Last year article.
http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013...ttle-in-japan/

According to research firm Impress R&D, 40% of Japanese ebook readers are buying from the Kindle store. The most popular competitor is BookWeb, an online bookstore run by domestic bricks-and-mortar bookstore chain Kinokuniya, which has about 13% of the market. Sony’s Reader Store is third with 10%, followed by Rakuten (Kobo), which has 7.4%.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Geralt

I don't think so for Japan.
Last year article.
http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013...ttle-in-japan/

I'm going to say this one more time. Amazon DOES NOT RELEASE SALES FIGURES. So this article is just guessing. Anytime we get an article like that it's just guessing as there are no hard numbers available to be accurate.