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Kindle Finally Ready For Global Distribution
geirnord writes "Previously a US-only device, the Amazon Kindle 2 is now finally available in an international edition. The new device is identical to the Kindle 2, with the exception of Edge and 3G support. That means Whispernet-like functionality over most of the world."
Reader pasm notes a report at The Guardian which points out higher ebook prices for international Kindle users. "When asked by the Guardian precisely how much downloads would cost, an Amazon.co.uk spokesman revealed that foreign customers — including those in Britain — would be paying $13.99 (£8.75) per book instead of the American price of $9.99 (£6.25). That amounts to a 40% premium for the same title." The spokesman said the higher prices reflected higher operating costs and VAT rates.
The spokesman said the higher prices reflected higher operating costs and VAT rates.
You don't have enough action points.
Slashdot is too nerdy for me.
To the other Canadians out there: we won't be getting it, according to the Globe and Mail:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/why-you-cant-get-the-kindle-in-canada/article1316081/
I guess I'll have to get it shipped in from Burundi or Sri Lanka instead.
It's available all over the world, but not in Canada.
According to the Globe and Mail, that is because until next month, there is only one network in Canada capable of carrying it (Rogers). In November, Bell and Telus will also be capable of carrying it.
We'll see.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/telecom-competition-behind-kindle-delay/article1317633/
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Under the VAT Directive 2006/112/EC of 28 November 2006, the suggested EU VAT rate for books (and children's nappies!) is the reduced rate of 5%. Many countries, such as Ireland, the UK, and Poland, for example, have charged zero percent VAT on books for years. Amazon is, as usual, full of it.
Da Blog
Who kindle is useful compare with other devices ?
Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps thinks that e-reader prices need to come down even more if the devices are going to become mainstream products, however. She suggested $99 as a price that would be much more likely to lure consumers. She said people "have somewhat unrealistic expectations of how much consumer electronics in general, and e-readers in particular, should be."
Considering that every consumer gadget falls in price dramatically over time, I'll just wait for when I can get an ebook reader at Walmart or Target for $49 or less. I remember when the MP3 players came out for hundreds of dollars and now you can get them for under $50 and they play CDs too.
As these things become more popular, more factories will open up to produce the screens, the cost will drastically come down from its current $60.
It will happen. You just need to be patient and let the first adopters get killed and pay for the manufacturing expansion.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
I recently bought a monitor for exactly double its price in the USA.
For commodity hardware, a rule of 1.5x the US price is quite accurate, but for those a little bit more rare, it goes all the way up to 2.5x. If the Kindle becomes available here (which I strongly doubt), I would fully expect a price of $550-600.
P.S. The VAT on books here is 0%.
Given these prices, It won't be as attractive competition to printed books. Also, people won't love DRM. 0% VAT here in Poland so their explanation is full of shit.
If I want to read fiction, I can easily grab a book and read it... where a portable device is *really* handy, however, is being able to carry a large number of books in a small space at once... such as reference material, and it is impractical to carry some 50 to 70 odd pounds of books everywhere. Thus, I want a portable device for reading documents that have already been formatted for 8.5x11, usable in any lighting condition where one could otherwise read conventional printed material (ie, laptop and notebook screens are not adequate because they are not easily readable in bright sunlight). Plastic Logic is coming out with a 10.4" diagonal screen reader soon that satisfies this contrast requirement, but even that's still about a third smaller than a full letter-sized screen.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Either you didn't hit "preview" or you think normal human beings can read huge blobs of text.
Fail in either cases.
The only reason the Kindle couldn't go "international" in the first place was because they want to have "international" pricing, which of course means DRM. Without DRM, Amazon's product could have been global more or less instantly.
Even regular folks think that ten bucks for an e-book is nonsense, and they are also starting to see how DRM reduces the value of an electronic purchase to essentially nil.
In the end, some Chinese company will come out with something technically similar with no strings attached, and they'll wipe the floor with Amazon if they don't improve on this silly strategy. I'd pay maybe a buck for an e-book, just for convenience sake--but not if you can yank it away from me at will.
expandfairuse.org
Our history is lost to the wind.
If digital persists, paper will dwindle. The future will have nothing that is going to survive the coming storm of world power shifts.
Since it's already been out a year in this model (version 2), I have a sneaking suspicion that this ploy is merely to dump old stock (if Amazon can get anyone to buy it) before a new model is introduced.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Note that this "international edition" still has the same gimped fonts as the "U.S. edition", which basically only contains latin characters.
This seems very silly, given that the kindle actually seems perfectly capable of using a default font with much larger coverage: someone released a patch that changes the default kindle font to be Google's wide-coverage (e.g. including CJK characters) "DroidSansFallback" font! (the page I linked to contains two patches, for two different fonts). It would have almost trivial for Amazon to do something similar (and they could have done a better job).
I don't know what Amazon is thinking, but this is a pretty pathetic attempt at an "international" kindle.
We live, as we dream -- alone....
...that it is their product and they can set the price wherever the hell they want to. You don't have buy their stuff if you don't want to.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
or, much more likely, it's a bot trying to get higher ratings on google but doesn't realise that slashdot adds nofollow to the links.
I'll wait till jesusTablet releases next summer.
The right comparison is not the difference between US e-books and UK e-books, but rather the price differential between print and electronic. Amazon's ability to price and distribute content is still limited by the requirements of publishers. So the question is, is the % difference between print and electronic in the UK larger than the % difference in the US.
The EU VAT policy directives specifically categorise ebooks and audio books as books, and thus *supposed* to be within the reduced VAT bands.
Amazon has a long history of basically ignoring EU law when it suits it. For example, Amazon.co.UK insisted for years on charging for VAT for books delivered to Ireland (when the UK still charged VAT). Did it refund that improperly charged VAT for Irish customers when it finally relented? No. See also: One-Click Patent. Amazon likes to borrow a lot of the oxygen about the freedom of information and open markets and the disincentivising quality of software patents, etc, but when it comes down to it, it's as aggressive and exclusionary and predatory as Apple or Microsoft.
Da Blog
Sorry Amazon, but your market is the early adoptors and those with to much cash.
The idea of an e-book reader in itself is... well it is the PSP-Go. What am I going to do with all the books I already bought? Can't rip them and put them on it can I?
Rebuy all of them? Sure, if they were cheap, but they ain't even cheaper then the printed book.
So, I have to buy a very expensive reader, that I can't use on my existing collection of books and in return I get something that can break if I sit on it, batteries run out, can't loan to someone, can't use in an emergency to start a fire, can't swat a fly with, can't sell cheaply or buy cheaply second-hand and worsed of all, none of the savings get passed on to me.
But e-books mean no printed copies to stock so ALL books every published can be available... yeah, but they ain't.
Sorry, this is a no-win to me.
It would be as if the mp3 players had been produced by the music industry (see Zune).
But maybe, just maybe, authors will rebel. They do NOT have the costs of a sound-studio, their product is ready for distro from the start and selling a few kb's is not exactly going to take a monster server. An author who sells his own books for a 50 cents but gets to collect those whole 50 cents might be a LOT better off, especially as he would kill the 2nd hand and loaning business. Who is going to bother for 50 cents?
But nah, that won't happen. Artists are lazy, if they weren't, they wouldn't be artists.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I live in Switzerland and I will not buy such a device.
The main reasons are:
- copy protection in Kindle (I usually pass on books that
I'm done with - if only to gain room for new books)
- reader way too expensive
- books way to expensive (paper still is a lot cheaper)
- can't highlight phrases / earmark pages / collect citations
- did I mention copy protection?
The ebook business will have to go a long way until they
get to the point where mp3 shops are today...
It doesn't work with the epub format that is associated with many freely available books. Its would be comparable to Apple having decided not to support MP3 format on there iPods. Its just absolutely ridiculous.
Seems that that whole globalization push is not meant for 'us', only for 'them' (for variable values of 'us' and 'them'). All the more reason to push back I'd say. If we don't get to pick the same fruits I don't see why we should play by the same rules...
--frank[at]unternet.org
Kindle = way too much Amazon lock-in, control and DRM.
Just give me an e-book reader that supports standard formats, with no wireless or DRM please.
Price varies by country. In Mexico it is 11.99. There are no blogs for delivery here though, that sucks
Amazon.co.uk spokesman revealed that foreign customers — including those in Britain — would be paying $13.99 (£8.75) per book instead of the American price of $9.99 (£6.25). That amounts to a 40% premium for the same title." The spokesman said the higher prices reflected higher operating costs and VAT rates.
Good. Paying significantly higher prices might help those who believe, "it is free because the government pays for it" to get a clue.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
... the subject line says it all.
The device is infected with DRM.
That unconditionally disqualifies it.
We can buy the kindle at a serious premium and English books at another premium. There are however no titles in my native language, Dutch.
Without that, it'll be hard to sell here in Belgium.
While your answer is logical and, on the surface, correct, it assumes perfect accounting procedures. However, if Irish tax authorities did not require VAT remitted to them for books sold, and Amazon was collecting said VAT, then where did the VAT go? Having dealt with VAT returns, I do know that while the wheels of revenue and excise turn extremely slowly, they do turn, and eventually, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday, you will get a VAT credit for overpayment.
Da Blog
I wonder if this means that my US Kindle 2 will be able to search the Wikipedia when I'm in the EU. If that's the case, then I think it's totally worth the extra price that they will be paying for their books.
I would absolutely kill to have an e-reader. I would kill. But I won't put up with DRM. I will never buy an e-reader until I am able to buy and OWN any books I download. No restrictions whatsoever. These companies need to get a grip on reality. Oh wait, they already have - you idiot consumers who say "oh well" and buy one anyway because you're willing to put up with it. If people actually stood up for what they want and expect, these companies would not have a way of making any money without first abandoning these horrific business models. I'm actually starting to cross the barrier where I'm no longer just annoyed by these companies and the consumers who let this continue, and moving to the point where I DESPISE the way our society works, companies and consumers alike.
Business has ALWAYS been about making money, but at least there was a time when a business actually bothered to do things the way the consumer expected. But now with booming populations in the tens of millions, companies don't even have to put in an effort anymore - enough of the population will just eat up any product tossed together with a little marketing. I tend to forget how much of the population is just... below average. :'(
Anyone own a Sony pocket reader? For 199$ it's able to read epub, pdf and html. I was thinking it might be worth a try since there is a ton of classic books I'd like to read (lovecraft, dickens, verne, etc.).
For about the same price I could also get a ipod/iphone touch, anyone using them as readers?
Hello Kindle, which is what I want for read and transporting PDFs and other stuff. there is enough software out there to convert much of my stored text into something that I can download.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Belgium isn't a real country.
VAT sounds like a very good reason to continue to buy dead trees then. In the UK at least, paper books are zero rated for VAT. It's only e-books and audio books the you pay VAT on.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
I have seen a demo of some other pdf reader and turning pages or moving them up/down was an extremely slow and tedious process. It also always caused a very unpleasant flicker of the page.
Is this also the case with the Kindle?