While I still love my Kindle and think e-books are definitely the way to go, I am still buying more print books than e-books. It's not that easy to buy Kindle books in Canada.
Amazon wants you to ONLY shop from Amazon for Kindle books. This policy stinks. AND you can't do it with a Canadian address. Even without Whispernet, if I could at least buy the e-books, I could download them from my computer. There are work-arounds to the address issue which I'm working on, but it's not easy.
Buying Kindle books from Amazon in the US is super-easy - a few clicks and you've got a book downloaded. It's so slick and nice you'd think that would be enough to get people to only shop from Amazon, without Amazon forcing publishers to choose Kindle format or nothing.
Fictionwise has a large e-book selection, but all the formats they offer are complicated, and at first glance it appears that you CAN get books in a Kindle-supported format, but in reality you CAN'T for most books (for any book sold on Amazon). Amazon has somehow managed to eliminate all e-competition. I thought that was illegal in the US--? There are probably workarounds to downloading a non-Kindle e-format and then stripping the DRM and converting it to Kindle format, but it's a PIA and I haven't figured it out yet. Sadly this happened after I paid to join the Fictionwise Club. grrr.
So for now, the only books on my Kindle are free ones I downloaded over Amazon's Whispernet while I was in the US, including driving in the car. We wanted to see how close to the border I could get before the Whispernet stopped working, but the batteries died before I could find out.
Hello, Amazon--? Canadians have money and we would really like to buy some friggin e-books for the friggin Kindle. If you don't make it possible for me to buy them through Amazon, you are forcing me to find a way to strip the Digital Rights Management (DRM) and convert other formats.
Note that I am not trying to steal or copy books. I want to BUY e-books for my Kindle from the comfort of my cozy Canadian home. Why is this so difficult? Did Jeff Bezos get dumped by some Canadian chick in his teen years? Bad fishing trip? Hockey jealousy? What is the problem?
UPDATE: The Kindle will soon be available in the Democratic Republic of CONGO but not in Canada. Come on!!
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2 comments:
Can you send documents to amazon and they send you kindle formatted docs back? In US we can do it to email or directly to kindle (for a fee). Not sure all formats supported. Word and pdf for sure.
Have you downloaded any from gutenberg.org? I know they have multiple formats for most books.
Some other sites to find free books:
http://www.baen.com/library/
http://www.suvudu.com/freelibrary/
http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=stories
Hm, very heavy on the SciFi. I know I got some mainstream publishers too but cannot find link. I think Random house has free books.
I've been on a strictly paper diet for months now. I was spending too much on kindle books and all the crappy drm got me down. Now I'm just devouring my old favorites and forgotten purchases.
I downloaded a few from gutenburg. Thanks for the other links. It's just crazy that I am ready and willing to buy e-books and can't. You should check out fictionwise- it looks to me like their prices are better than amazon, although since you have a kindle you'll have the same problem I did...
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