SHIPPING DATESUpdated 8/13/10 for current-order shipping date.
The Amazon Kindle Community forums had many posts Friday about new Kindle 3 shipping dates that are as late as October showing up on their Amazon accounts. Obviously there was some consternation over that (a customer service representative said that they received many phone calls and emails about this today), but then after a few hours, the varied dates and date-ranges seen for Kindle Open Orders were gone, replaced by the statement:
"We'll notify you via e-mail when we have an estimated delivery date for this item."
A few hours later, the Kindle product pages for both the U.S. Amazon and UK Amazon stores have been quoting the same expected ship date:
US/International (except UK):
"Order now to reserve your place in line. Orders are prioritized on a first come, first served basis. Orders placed today are expected to ship on or before September 10th. "
UK Only:
"Orders are prioritised on a first-come, first-served basis. Orders placed today are expected to dispatch on or before September 10."
Since it's not logical that orders placed much earlier than today would be shipped as late as October while those placed today would ship in early September, it must have been a (quite a) glitch.
COLORS - Non USA
Many in the Kindle forums have been writing that they want the White Kindle 3 rather than the Graphite one, but those ordering from outside the U.S. are reporting that only the Graphite one is available to them.
KINDLE DX IN THE UK
ALSO, Amazon UK is, as of today, not showing the Kindle DX as buyable from the UK store. So, at least for now, UK residents will still need to purchase those from Amazon U.S. for some reason.
KINDLE BOOK PRICING IN THE UK
After over half a year of having to pay $2 more for each Kindle book, UK customers are now ironically in the position of getting these e-books at a considerably lower price than in the U.S. That should help make up for the much higher pricing for periodicals during the last half-year. Blogs will now be available and I imagine photographs will be included in the newspapers and magazine subscriptions.
The UK Kindle product-page says:
"We check hundreds of prices every day to make sure our prices are the lowest of any e-bookstore in the UK."
Why the lower e-book pricing there? The idea of the Apple Agency pricing arrangements did not go over well in the UK where they frown on anything that appears to be price-fixing.
Penguin gave Amazon a bad time recently over e-book pricing and availability. They disallowed selling of the new Penguin e-books until Amazon agreed to the Apple Agency arrangement, then Jeff Bezos lowered the price of Penguin's new hardcover books to compensate as hardcovers are not on the Agency plan), and customers became impatient. Penguin has changed its tune during the launch of Amazon UK. The Guardian headline and subtitle for July 29:
' Penguin boss has no problem with ebooksIn the body of the article Makiknson also says,
John Makinson says that if people want to read using new technology, that's what publishers must give them '
" It does redefine what we do as publishers and I feel, compared with most of my counterparts, more optimistic about what this means for us...Of course there are issues around copyright protection and there are worries around pricing and around piracy, royalty rates and so on, but there is also this huge opportunity to do more as publishers. "
Yes, there is. In the U.S., he, the other Big5, and Apple joined to raise the e-book prices considerably. :-) Digital media rights are convoluted. While we can buy hardcover books from other countries over the Net, there are, as many have found, loads of publisher restrictions on digital books. So, U.S. residents may not be, as it stands now, able to just buy books from Amazon UK, it seems. Not even for an additional $2 per book cost that non-U.S. customers buying Kindle books (w/authorization from publishers) paid to get them from Amazon-US. I hope I'm mistaken.
He seems mostly entranced with the potential of digital books for which video can be added. While I enjoy "enhanced" books, I'd love it if Makinson works to price e-books for the text, and offer the fancier editions at higher prices for whatever added labor and rights-buying will go into those.
Congratulations to the UK folks!
Check often: Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones
Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources. Top 100 free bestsellers.
DELIVERY CONCERNS
ReplyDeleteI noticed that my expected delivery date jumped from the 27th August (I ordered one of the last ones one the 1st August) to the 1st October. After a quick call (using the new Amazon call me service https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/contact-us/general-questions.html) they confirmed that on the customer service system they were expecting it to arrive on the 27th August as originally promised and there was a problem in the my account calculation.
Those people who preordered *BEFORE* Amazon showed the TEMPORARY OUT OF STOCK sign on the item have ordered a physical product being held by Amazon for the launch date of 27th August.
Those people who order *AFTER* this O-O-Stock announcement are being queued and should expect their order to be delivered around the time suggested on the product at the time of ordering (eg Today it is showing: "Orders placed today are expected to dispatch on or before September 8.") These orders are being queued and awaiting further stock delivery. Allowing for further stock to be brought in Amazon still expect to deliver by the date shown on the item at the time of ordering.
Phew! I'm glad that I will be getting it soon as I start a course at the beginning of September and am ordering most of my reading list on Kindle - some of which I need to have read before I start (I'm currently using the Kindle/PC but I'm looking forward to the E-Ink and words/line adjustment to increase the amount of reading I can do per day).
FREE REGULAR BOOKS (non-classic on daily $0.00)
Yes a lot of books are cheaper on the UK site
PS if you want to get a stock of free regular books do what I did.
Download and register Kindle/PC from Amazon.COM and download as many of the free newly released books as you can find. Search the Kindle blogs for recommendations of the daily FREE regular books and order them to be delivered to you Kindle/PC immediately.
After ordering your Kindle device Amazon will setup a 's Kindle in the Manage My Kindle page. Once this has happened you will start seeing Amazon prompting you to move your Kindle account to Amazon.CO.UK.
Please ignore this advice UNTIL you get your Kindle ... as once you move your Kindle account you will no longer be able to get the FREE REGULAR books that you find on Amazon.COM. When you move your account all of your purchases (and free 'purchases') move to the .CO.UK account and you will no longer get hold of your free regular books from .COM
CHEAPER UK BOOKS
Yes we are currently getting cheaper books (even allowing for the currency conversion.
Ebooks in the UK are almost exclusively used by people in the IT industry. Yes the general public use PDF occaisionally but it is usually a manual (as we don't see printed manuals these days), or bank statement/insurance documents.
Actually PURCHASING an Ebook (PDF or Kindle) does not really happen. A concern for amazon and one that has delayed a UK launch for ages.
Amazon is deliberately pricing low to develop a market that does not really exist in the general public.
GETTING MORE FREE BOOKS.
Some of the best places for more FREE books are:
ARCHIVE.ORG
Search for your book and click on the Kindle book to download ... see the manual for usb connections or email them to yourname@free.kindle.com
OPENLIBRARY.ORG
FIRST change your maximum charge for PERSONAL documents to $0.00 (see Manage My Kindle)
Select ebooks checkbox and search or browse.
Once you have found your book, click SEND TO KINDLE. Login to Amazon and select your Kindle (device only not PC/MAC/IPOD versions)
This sends the Kindle book version to your kindle as a PERSONAL document and you will get charged at $0.15 per MB upto your limit. However, if it is bigger than your limit (which you set to $0.00, didn't you?), then it routes via yourname@free.kindle.com which you then pick up for free at your next WIFI connection!
PS feel free to cut and paste this info into any blogs etc
Ian,
ReplyDeleteThanks especially for that detailed report of your talk with Customer Svc. I'll clip some of that into the body of tomorrow's.
Re free books, you should take a look at the links in the footer of the posts and just take the ones that look interesting as they last only a few days.
A key element is that the free ones from Amazon are kept on their servers and if you want, the highlighting and notes you make are also kept with the book, as well as on your private, password-protected webpage at Amazon for annotations for all books.
My http://bit.ly/kfreelow3 concentrates on external sites for which downloading to your Kindle direct does NOT incur Amazon's server charges.
Some of that is also at Project Gutenberg direct to your Kindle at no charge and the half million free Google books access, also with free downloads of converted books (or do it yourself) at 500K free Google books.
Good advice on catching books from Amazon that might not be on your UK list...
As it stands, UK Kindle store and eBooks are available only to accounts with a UK shipping address.
ReplyDeleteSo not only are US residents excluded, even other EU countries are excluded (this despite free trade agreements allowing crossborder shipment of all goods between EU countries, so there's no legal reason for this).
The only reason I can think of is that Amazon UK had to jump through hoops to get publishers to agree with the lower prices they're charging, and those publishers set a restriction that they could only be sold at those prices inside the UK.
jwenting,
ReplyDeleteThat makes sense. Thanks for that.
I think I ran into you at the infamous thread by YTWong and assorted folks. Have posted there also.
Amy,
ReplyDeleteI'll post a statement from Amazon later that if you ordered before August 1, your shipment date will be the release date. There was some kind of glitch in their notices for accounts.
And, yes, if there were to be a problem, you could just send it to him (they don't send to Afghanistan from Amazon). Best of luck to your brother, and a thanks to him.
Amy,
ReplyDeleteThat is too bizarre. See the Communication Director's quote in an email sent to the Examiner.com site.
Examiner.Com report.
Well, the ones ordered before August should be shipped on time. Drew Herdener of Amazon confirmed that to examiner.com but it seems your brother's would be a week later, which makes sense. IF they can send that one at the same time as yours it'd be nice but I wouldn't count on it...
ReplyDeleteAndrys, a bit off topic, but important nonetheless - in your reply to Amy, you wrote
ReplyDelete"Best of luck to your brother, and a thanks to him."
I wonder, what are you thanking him for? Going to a country where he is not wanted, nor needed, to kill innocent civilians, all so that the US imperialistic ambitions could be achieved? Are you aligned with those imperialistic ambitions, or have you been brainwashed into thinking that it is the holy war intended to defend freedom and democracy? (I would feel truly sorry for you if it was the latter)
I wish you insight and prosperity.
Alexander
Alexander,
ReplyDeleteYou're right, it is off-topic and your arrogance in wishing me insight or wondering if I've been brainwashed doesn't speak well for you. I hope you're young, as that is the only excuse.
But on the Internet, it's the norm to attack based on a self-righteousness that's instinctual.
I wished him well and did not expand on it. I thank him for caring to risk his life for what he FEELS may be work on the behalf of those he loves and for others here, whether I agree or not. How do you know he's not doing work that helps people build back their infrastructure?
No, that would take too much thinking or less black & white processes. It's also more complex as there actually are people who worry about the fallout of what was done in the past and I will not, in -this- space go into it.
I personally have been against the rationale for going into Iraq since the beginning and am sick at the loss of life and limb of Iraqis and Americans.
Not all are 'innocent civilians' who have been killed, as Saddam's bunch were no angels, but again I was against it.
There are no angels by the way, in this -- only those caught up in it by pressure from power seekers on all sides of this.
And I thank you to keep politics away from this space from now on because I do not have to publish any comments.
You have plenty of spaces to exercise your zeal for Gray = White or Black, and I'm not talking Kindle here.