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Amazon Kindle e-books question | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Bookstores |  | |
| Ligador Diglot Groupie United States Joined 4962 days ago 81 posts - 101 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 1 of 15 07 December 2011 at 10:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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Disclaimer: I apologize if I am posting in the wrong room. I was not sure whether to post in Books, Literature, and Reading or Language Programs or what. If this is an inconvenience I apologize and hope that the moderators move the topic accordingly.
Now my question is whether one can download e-books from a foreign country? I live in the United States and am currently learning Spanish and German. I'd like to be able to access the wealth of resources of amazon.es and amazon.de respectively, but I am not sure if I will be able to download e-books from those countries. I have searched on the internet but have not found anything conclusive so far. Might anyone be able to clarify this for me? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mikonai Diglot Senior Member United States weirdnamewriting.bloRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4928 days ago 178 posts - 281 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Swahili, German | Message 2 of 15 08 December 2011 at 12:09am | IP Logged | ||
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While I haven't actually bought e-books from a non-american branch of Amazon, I have
ordered some books from Amazon.it, using the same account as my normal Amazon.com account. I have also seen some Italian e-books on the American Amazon site, but as the Kindle at that time hadn't been released in Italy, I don't know whether that's the same set of books available or not. After poking around, it appears that certain titles are only available in certain languages. If you go to your Kindle settings page and change the country associated with your Kindle, however, you may be able to buy some books in other languages. Now that I see this, I'll probably have to try that myself :) EDIT: Looks like you need to supply a full address if you change the country, as well as a phone number. There are a few books available for me in Italian, probably more in Spanish, but I wouldn't know about German. ...unless of course you can get someone to let you borrow an address and phone number in the country of your choice ;) Edited by mikonai on 08 December 2011 at 12:14am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ligador Diglot Groupie United States Joined 4962 days ago 81 posts - 101 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 3 of 15 08 December 2011 at 3:22am | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you very much! Unfortunately I haven't the luxury of a friend in Spain or Germany but ahh that's life. I'll have to see what kind of selection Amazon US has in German or Spanish before purchasing.
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| Eumaeus Groupie Australia Joined 5603 days ago 75 posts - 134 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian | Message 4 of 15 08 December 2011 at 6:30am | IP Logged | ||
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Try manybooks.net.
I just had a quick look, they have over six hundred German and two hundred Spanish books. They are all free because they are all old enough to be out of copyright. I don't know what you're into but they have books on a wide range of subjects. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4908 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 5 of 15 08 December 2011 at 8:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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You can only buy kindle books from the Amazon where your kindle is registered. Even if you live in the UK you can't buy kindle books from amazon.de (which is probably against EU rules, but meh).
However, there are still a lot of foreign language kindle books available from amazon.com and amazon.co.uk. For example, yesterday I downloaded Journey to the Centre of the Earth in French, and it was free. Besides ordering from Amazon, you can get e-books in compatible formats, and email them to your kindle. I have done this with some pdf's, with reasonable success. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chris13 Groupie FinlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4050 days ago 53 posts - 64 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Swedish, Finnish | Message 6 of 15 10 January 2014 at 12:04pm | IP Logged | ||
Sorry, I realise this is old and perhaps things have changed a little in the time that has passed. I was initially going to ask about the language you can buy books in and whether or not it is dependant on where you bought your kindle, but you already answered that here. What I am currently wondering is, would it be possible to organise some kind of Kindle thread for exchanging kindle books? I purchased mine in the UK, however I am an English native and though I like to read in English I also like to have language materials to learn from. I am not sure which countries the kindle is supported in. Could we, if this is possible, then to organise by country, etc? English Kindle books (List of those members with an English kindle and their books) German (Same as above) Japan (likewise) This way people who would want to have more resources available to them, can swap with people who desire the resources they currently have. The preferred format for the kindle seems to be mobi which is pretty small, so the trading of files shouldn't be too difficult via email, or other methods. This is just an idea, I have no idea of the ramifications that are possibly involved with this. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4638 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 7 of 15 10 January 2014 at 12:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi Chris, I suspect that what you suggest would be illegal. I use Amazon and Kindle a lot, and living in France I have my account at amazon.fr. For some reason they allow me to register at amazon.com if I want to, but not on e.g. amazon.de or amazon.es. I think amazon.com is the default for anyone living in a country where Amazon has not established a separate site.
That being said, they are getting better and better at offering a wide range of e-books in different languages. on the French site, I have a wealth of languages to choose from. The choice of books for certain languages is very restriced, but for the big ones, English, French, German, Italian, even Russian, there are tens of thousands of titles. It is however true that some titles can be bought in one country but not in another. Some German books, for instance, are available at amazon.de but not on amazon.fr. It is strange that it is so within the EU, and I still have not seen a very good explanation for it, but there it is. (The paradox is that if you want the paper copy of the same book, then you have no problem ordering it from amazon.de even if you live in France - but you have to pay for the shipping.) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4908 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 8 of 15 10 January 2014 at 12:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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I believe it is against forum rules to make these sorts of arrangements, because it would
involve copyright violation. I have recently learnt a little about why a book is available in one country and not another. Amazon has no say in the matter, it simply comes down to the publisher's decision. The publisher has to tell Amazon if they want their kindle book published on a different country's Amazon site. Presumably, most publishers don't see much of a market, so they don't bother. One possible action we could take would be to write to publishers with a request that they publish their ebooks on other Amazon sites. Organizing a letter-writing campaign in support of language learning is a good use of the forums! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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