Canada
I first heard about Canada's Amazon store launch being imminent from Nate Hoffelder, who's also written about the China launch after being prepared for it since he noticed the Paperwhite's User Manual was available in Mandarin.
I see the basic Kindle is on sale on Amazon Canada's front page, though they direct the interested to Amazon U.S.'s International product page for Canada.
The wording, with no date on when it was posted, reads:
' Over 1,560,000 English-language books to choose from; plus U.S. and international newspapers and magazines are available for your country. Because publishers give us eBook rights on a country by country basis, available titles for your country will vary from our current U.S selection. We are actively working with publishers to get the rights to all titles for every country and adding this selection every day. Check the Kindle Store to see available titles.
Low Book Prices: New York Times® Best Sellers and New Releases are $11.99, unless marked otherwise. You'll also find many books for less - over 135,000 titles are priced under $5.99 '
No app store or mention of Kindle Fire tablets. Also, the Kindle Paperwhite has a waiting period in the States (not in stock until Dec. 20 here), so that may be a reason it's not showing in the Canada store at this point.
China
There are about 25,000 books, but Dangdang, a major retailer there, offers around 100,000.
Currently, in watching the forums, I've seen that consumers in China have bought Kindles from other countries, as C/NET writes.
While the Kindle Touch and Kindle Fire, as well as two other Kindle devices, did receive, Whitney says, regulatory approval from the State Radio Regulation of China (he cites Reuters), there are apparently some obstacles to these being ready right away, as I've read for the last few weeks.
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Whitney adds that "Despite not having an official Kindle e-reader for the Chinese market, Amazon is encouraging customers to get the Kindle app for their iOS or Android mobile devices. Just don't expect to get the app through the Amazon website, since the Amazon app store is not yet available in China. Nevertheless, it's a good idea to put the app on the recently available iPhone 5 or iPad Mini."
In the meantime, U.S. residents can choose from approximately 1,480+ Kindle books in Chinese that are in the Foreign Language Books area of the U.S. store.
For daily free ebooks, check the following links:
| Temporarily-free books - Non-classics USA: by: Publication Date Bestselling High-ratings UK: PubDate Popular The Kindle Daily Deal What is 3G? and "WiFi"? Battery Care Highly-rated under $1, | Most Popular Free K-Books U.S. & Int'l (NOT UK): Top 100 free UK-Only: Top 100 free Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources. USEFUL for your Kindle Keyboard (U.S. only, currently): 99c Notepad 1.1, 99c Calculator, 99c Calendar, |
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Andrys, still waiting on your review of Bluetooth keyboards for the Kindle Fire. Am holding off until we hear from you.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, no nickname even? :-)
DeleteI forgot about that. Will do that in the next two days then. Thanks.
Andrys,
ReplyDeleteDo you know anything about the lack of availability of any kindle to Canadians that has 3G connectivity? Curiously, while the Amazon.com site shows those version which use 3G as available, when I choose any of them, I am told it cannot be shipped to my location (Canada) and am re-directed to the "international site" and there, no 3G kindles are available. Curious ...
P.
Pamela, for Canada itself, there's no 3G model direct there yet though I saw something about the Paperwhite getting there =eventually= -- it's just that they're shipping late to the U.S. already and were not orderable for Christmas Day even. Backed up, so it'll probably be awhile.
DeleteAccording to my listing at Current Kindles page, you can order the Kindle Keyboard internationally, and if you click on that, at amzn.to/kk-global, it says it can be shipped to Canada.
Did you try that? You probably want a Touch model though? The Kindle Keyboard one has free 3G for all web browsing (not just the Kindle store and Wikipedia), although that's limited to 50Megs of data/mo. but there should be no problem with that.
Andrys,
DeleteSorry, I should've been more specific... yes, it appears that they can be shipped to Canada, it's just that they've been "currently unavailable" for awhile. I hate to be paranoid, but that, coupled with the messages I've been getting that ask me to move my Kindle account to Amazon.ca, make me go "hmmmm". I've not moved my account because of the last four Kindle books I've searched for on Amazon.com, three are not available on Amazon.ca. And of course, although this doesn't affect me personally, it seems like the only things that moving an account to Amazon.ca changes is to reduce your access to subscriptions, etc. So it's hard to see any advantage to switching... in fact, it seems like a distinct disadvantage. Any idea what's up with this move to "segregation"?
P.
Pamela, no, I've no idea.
DeleteA couple of earlier blog entries re Canada and the Kindle.
1. http://kindleworld.blogspot.com/2009/11/canada-finally-gets-kindle-late-border.html - about Canada getting the Kindle instead of having workarounds to purchase one via the U.S. with tricks.
2. http://kindleworld.blogspot.com/2010/03/amazon-wants-physical-presence-in.html - about Amazon seeking gov approval to establish physical operations in canada - filing an application to "establish a new Canadian business" 1/27/10.
It was thought it would be helpful for Canadians to be able to get some books not available to them via the U.S. Amazon site.
But with a publisher focus on more stringent enforcement of territorial rights, not sure what the advantages are for customers.
Digital rights and books in all the various countries just confuse me no end. Publishing rights for a book can be entirely different - with one company having rights in this country and another in another country. Wish they could all do a global rights agreement. But that's because I know nothing about these things.