visiting Canada in July - buying e-books there?

[sufue]

I wasn't quite sure where to post this, but in the end, I figured this forum might work as well as any. Moderator, please move if you think appropriate...

We'll be going on vacation in Canada in July. So, I'll be physically in Canada and might want to buy some e-books that are not legally sold in the US due to this "sale-location-is-buyer's-location-rather-than-seller's-location" thing. Yeah, yeah, I know there are proxy servers and work-arounds, but it would be nice to just buy properly without (too much) hassle.

So, I am looking for info/recommendations, if anyone knows or has already thought about these things - I'm pretty sure someone on MobileRead will have! I did do a bit of searching, and found some info on some books/authors and on a couple of e-bookstores, but some of it was pretty dated.

Are there any Canadian authors (esp. mystery/crime) that are available as e-books, or more available, in Canada, and not the US? Maybe someone like Alison Gordon? Or Gail Bowen, only some of whose books are available in the US? Or maybe some UK authors, especially historical mystery authors? I know most of what I see is the opposite - sighs of woe (or howls of fury) from Canadians about authors not available in Canada, but I'm wondering about the reverse

Which, if any, e-bookstores will recognize that I'm in Canada and not the US - presumably this means they would look at my laptop's IP address and not my billing address? And, if so, would a US billing address still screw things up - i.e. should I buy a gift card or ???

And, are some of the UK websites (Waterstones, WH Smith, etc.) more available in Canada than in the US?

Finally, I also do read some French, so wouldn't mind advice on French e-books as well.

I'm pretty format-insensitive, since I have multiple reading devices and apps available.

Thanks in advance for any advice - it will be much appreciated! And when I get back, I'll post if I learned anything new in the process.

[sufue]

Oh, and one last (maybe last ) question -

What about books that might be in the public domain in Canada, but not in the US, e.g. Josephine Tey?

I'd love some recommendations there too!

[SensualPoet]

There are a number of titles at MR that are legal to download in Canada while in Canada. Kobobooks.com is the only Canadian ebookstore; before you log in, you might see different titles than after your identify yourself. Amazon.com sometimes appears that way.

[BrowseTheStacks]

How about Project Gutenberg Canada... Http://gutenberg.ca

[sufue]

Thanks for the suggestions about Gutenberg Canada and the MobileRead Patricia Clark library, which I am aware of. I'm already definitely planning on downloading the Josephine Tey MR books while in Canada!

What I was looking for more, though, is folks' suggestions/recommendations about other specific books or authors (in addition to Ms. Tey) that are in the public domain in Canada and not in the US - stuff I ought to grab while I have the chance. I am going to be on vacation with my family, who will get cranky if I try to spend our whole vacation browsing and downloading e-books . So I was hoping someone might already have checked this out and could suggest some worthwhile PD downloads, especially mysteries, but also anything else classic that I really ought to take advantage of being in Canada for.

I know I'm being a bit lazy, but I am sort of hoping that someone(s) else has already done some research on this...

[sufue]

@Sensual Poet:

So do your comments about Amazon and Kobo looking different before logging in mean that those sites will initially look at my IP address first, and determine that I'm in Canada, but then once I log in, my billing address will screw it up and make them think I'm in the US? Could I maybe use a gift card and temporarily change my address to our hotel's address or something like that to get around it?

[NightBird]

Here's one SP recommended that's not available as an ebook in the US:

My latest read was The Saltmarsh Murders by Gladys Mitchell, an author -- incredibly -- I did not know before. Mitchell began her mystery writing career in 1929 and is pretty much a contemporary of Agatha Christie. Her heroine ... through 66 novels! ... is Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley, or "Mrs Bradley" as she is referred to in this early outing, first published in 1932.

Random House Vintage has reissued a half dozen of the (mostly) early titles. This one bears the tagline: "A quick-witted, clever mystery from the Golden Age of crime writing" and that sums it up nicely. It is quaint in some ways, but also unexpectedly funny in other places. There are vicars, and pubs, and secret passages ... and murder. Like a number of Christie novels, this one has a fairly long lead in of facts and characters before the story really starts to take off. So prepare yourself for a leisurely entrée into the world of Saltmarsh, as narrated by the young deacon, Noel Wells, and the surprising characters that inhabit this town.

Available at kobo, amazon and possibly your local library (which is where I found a copy!).

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...t=48511&page=8

Glady's Mitchell's terrific heroine, Mrs Beatrice Bradley, is a recent discovery for me. Six of her 66 novels are currently in e-print from Random House and happily available from my local library. In October, I reported on The Saltmarsh Murders here. In Death at the Opera (1934), Mrs Bradley is brought in to investigate the suspicious drowning of a teacher at Hillmaston School; the incident took place during the performance of The Mikado by the students and staff for the benefit of the parents and local community. Despite drowning in a basin of water in a utility closet, the coroner declares suicide – but the headmaster is not convinced. Enter sly but feisty Mrs Bradley who quickly uncovers dark motives, deep secrets, clandestine love affairs and potential enemies around every corner: seemingly everyone had a motive and an alibi. And then a second murder occurs ...

It's a delicious tale, told at a leisurely pace, full of eccentric but believable characters which will leave you routing for one, then another, to be innocent or spared from an indiscretion being made public. It's not clear to me why other talented writers – contemporaries Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers, Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh and others – are still so widely celebrated yet Mitchell is not. One hopes a mini revival is taking place and more of these delightful stories will return to circulation.

Available for Kobo, Kindle and from other vendors for about $8.50.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...=48511&page=14

Your idea sounds like it would work for Kobo anyway. They ask for a US billing address even when you use a gift card. They do go by your IP address even if you're not logged in so you don't see the books that are not available in the US.

[sufue]

@Nightbird Thanks so much for the Gladys Mitchell suggestion. I remember reading a couple of her books many years ago, but had forgotten/didn't realize they were available elsewhere as e-books. I'll definitely put on my list to look at (and hopefully buy) while in Canada.

I decided I'm just going to e-mail Kobo and some other e-book stores and ask them how I can buy Canadian e-books while I'm in Canada, and see what answers I get. (I may get nonsense back, or nothing back, but, WTH, I'll try...)

Thanks again!

[NightBird]

Yw. Good idea to just ask them.

Hope you have a great trip.

[sufue]

So, I’m back from our trip to Canada, and thought I’d do an update on how it was trying to buy e-books as an American (with American billing address, but Canadian IP address) in Canada, in case someone else wants to try the same thing some time.

I tried contacting three stores (Kobo, Amazon, and BN) before we left to get their input on how to do this, given that since e-book sale location is supposedly the purchaser’s location, it should be allowed for me to purchase Canadian-restricted e-books while I was in Canada, regardless of whether I’m American and/or have an American billing address.

Amazon simply said, not possible:

I'm sorry to inform you that, In order to purchase Kindle content from Amazon.com Kindle store or from Canadian address, you must have a credit or debit card issued by a Canadian Bank with a Canada billing address. To accomplish this, you must set your Canadian credit or debit card as 1-Click ordering method and update your home country.

So, I didn’t even try with them while in Canada.

BN said (after going back and forth a couple times to get beyond the pre-canned and non-applicable responses):

When ordering NOOK Books in Canada, our system will recognize the IP address that you are using. In this case, only limited number of NOOK Books can be ordered while you are in Canada. Please check the details of the book on the website before downloading the eBooks.

However, I found that in practice, although I could view Canadian books when I first visited the BN site while I was in Canada, I couldn’t actually buy them once I logged in, leading me to suspect that they DO look at your billing address before you purchase.

BUT, I did have success with Kobo, who had e-mailed me and said that their system would pick up my IP-address, and that if I had issues with billing address, I could just pick up a gift card at a Chapters bookstore and use that.

Like BN, Kobo did show me Canadian books when I first visited their site, but, also like BN, they disappeared and I saw American books once I logged in. By this time, I was frustrated, though, and even more frustrated when I looked for a Chapters bookstore and discovered that there weren’t any in Québec (city). So, I crossed my fingers and changed my billing address to the address of our Canadian hotel, and voilà, it worked – even though the billing address obviously didn’t even come close to matching the real billing address on my card! I find this a little scary in general , but I was happy about it in the moment.

And, as an aside, this might have worked with the BN site too, but I never went back and tried it – my family was getting cranky with me burying my nose in my laptop too much

I ended up buying some Gladys Mitchell titles, a couple of Gail Bowen books that actually worked out to be cheaper than in the US (even with the weak US dollar, but with a Kobo coupon), and a William Deverell book that isn’t available in the US (Kill All the Judges). You can tell I like mysteries! It seemed to me that Canadian e-books are in general a bit more expensive than the US versions (ignoring exchange rate), but sometimes they were discountable in Canada and not in the US, or occasionally they were just flat out less expensive. And, I scoured the forums and found a couple of Kobo codes I hadn’t used yet, so that helped on a couple of my purchases.

I also downloaded the Josephine Tey books from the MR libraries, since I was in Canada, and they are in the public domain there.

Hopefully this will help if anyone else is in the same circumstances…

[jehane]

Thanks sufue, that's very useful to know for those of us who are extremely geo-restricted/ subject to ridiculous publisher prices (ie, Australian) I bought my Sony while on holiday in the US as well as a small suitcase worth of paper books at about a third of the price they go for here. If I go to the US again I'll certainly be buying up ebooks!