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E-books and foreign languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Links & Internet Resources |  | |
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4443 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 1 of 28 29 August 2013 at 3:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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I buy a lot of e-books in different languages from Amazon, and since I live in France my Kindle is registered on their French site. Today I discovered that their list of languages in which you can buy e-books has been extended. It used to list just English, German, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, but now suddenly Catalan and Basque appear in the list. In addition their is a link to "autres langues" which gives the following list (with number of available books in brackets):
• Afrikaans (1 143) • Danois (235) • Néerlandais (165) • Finnois (223) • Irlandais (42) • Luxembourgeois (2) • Norvégien (30) • Écossais (gaélique) (1) • Suédois (108) • Islandais (2) • Gallois (8) This made me curious about what the situation is on their other sites, so I did a quick search at the American, British, German and Spanish sites. This is what I came up with: The US-based .com site has a Foreign language books section with the following list: • Libros en Español • Livres en Français • Deutschsprachige Bücher • Libri in Italiano • Livros em Português The German site is quite similar to the French. You find a main list with the following languages: • Französisch • Spanisch • Italienisch • Portugiesisch • Niederländisch • Dänisch • Schwedisch Then follows a link to "weitere Sprachen" with this list: • Afrikaans (1.143) • Dänisch (250) • Niederländisch (166) • Finnisch (234) • Irisch (42) • Luxemburgisch (2) • Norwegisch (31) • Schottisch-Gälisch (1) • Schwedisch (116) • Isländisch (2) • Walisisch (8) The Spanish site lists "Catalan, Euskera and Gallego" not as foreign languages, as after all they are languages with an official status in parts of Spain, and then they have the following "foreign languages" list: • Inglés • Alemán • Francés • Italiano Finally, on the UK site I could not find any link to foreign language books at all! If I am mistaken and made an oversight, please tell me. There are some interesting observations to make from this: I suspect the addition of Basque and Catalan on the French site must reflect a demand from Catalan and Basque speakers living in France - after all they are not the most widely spoken languages of Europe. However, no mention of Bréton or Elsassisch. Interesting to see Danish and Swedish listed in the main part on the German site. Furthermore, both the French and German sites are very similar in the range of languages included, and the number of books available is often, but not always identical. What is most striking is the absence from the list of certain languages, not least Russian. By searching on the .fr site I have found that they have many hundred Russian e-books, so why is Russian not mentioned? I have no idea how Amazon conducts its business and policy when it comes to the e-book market, but I do now that frustratingly, your Kindle has to be linked to one particular site, so since I am on Amazon.fr, I cannot shop e-books on .de or .es, for instance. A final question therefore is why a global company like Amazon cannot offer exactly the same range of e-books on each of its sites, especially in Europe where we have an internal market within the EU? I know, there are issues related to exclusive and non-exclusive rights in different countries and parts of the world, but still one would have thought that it would be in everyone's interest (I mean writers, editors and e-companies) to sell an e-book in as big a market as possible? This being said, I am very happy to see that they are now making it easier for me to buy e-books in Catalan and other languages (even Norwegian) on the French site, and hopefully this trend will continue. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| maucca Diglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4455 days ago 33 posts - 64 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English Studies: French | Message 2 of 28 29 August 2013 at 5:28pm | IP Logged | ||
They're there all right, but you have to do a little clicking around: Shop by Department -> Books -> Audiobooks -> Categories -> See All -> Language (not "Languages") -> See more ... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| stifa Triglot Senior Member Norway lang-8.com/448715 Joined 4677 days ago 629 posts - 813 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, EnglishC2, German Studies: Japanese, Spanish | Message 3 of 28 29 August 2013 at 6:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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There are a lot of foreign books in the UK kindle section:
- German (194,088) - French (116,004) - Spanish (74,812) - Italian (56,833) - Portuguese (17,071) - Danish (247) - Finnish (230) - Dutch (166) - Swedish (115) - Irish (42) - Norwegian (31) - Welsh (9) - Luxembourgish (2) - Icelandic (2) - Scottish Gaelic (1) Edited by stifa on 29 August 2013 at 6:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4713 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 4 of 28 29 August 2013 at 6:05pm | IP Logged | ||
On Amazon.co.uk you click on kindle --> kindle books. Then down on the left (waaaaaay down), you get these options:
If you click on that final option, you just get a list of books in all the above languages. Now look at the left side, and there's an option for "More languages". It has these options:
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4813 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 5 of 28 29 August 2013 at 9:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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There is a catch.
They do offer the ebooks but you cannot buy unless you are in the country. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4337 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 6 of 28 30 August 2013 at 9:58am | IP Logged | ||
That's not true. I am currently reading a German ebook I bought off the Amazon UK site. There are actually a lot of German ebooks available on that site. There is a basic difference in the law between paper books and electronic books. For paper books the distribution agreement between the author and the publisher dictates where the book can be sold. For electronic books it determines where the book can be bought. So a book seller located in Paris can ship paper books anywhere in the world; but an electronic book seller in Paris can only sell books located within the area agreed in the contract by publisher and author. For English books the usual area of distribution used to be Commonwealth countries (Australia, Canada, NZ, South Africa, India, UK etc) with a separate agreement usually for USA. I remember seeing paperbacks sold in Australia with "not for sale in USA" in small print next to the price information at the back. There may still be English ebooks at can be bought on Amazon.co.uk, but not on Amazon.com for that reason. For French books this seems to France, Belgium, Monaco etc. So someone in Brussels should have full access to e-books on the Amazon.fr site. For German books I would guess this would be Switzerland, Germany, Austria, but I haven't seen any differences between the Amazon.de and Amazon.co.uk sites for German books so I don't know if that's true. Amazon and other book sellers will obviously sell what they can, but they can only sell what they are legally allowed to. Hopefully publishers will move to a standard global license at some point, but I have no idea likely that is in the near future. Edited by patrickwilken on 30 August 2013 at 10:08am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4813 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 7 of 28 30 August 2013 at 3:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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I couldn't download any ebook from amazon.es :-(
Well I really wish all those separate areas of distribussion were removed, at least for the EU. What good is to be in a union with supposedly free market when I cannot buy something just because of my adress. The "law" is totally wrong. Well, if they want me to download pirate copies, I have no trouble with it. As you see, it is still the same countries that get the new things. I sometimes feel like the companies must be crazy to prefer risky markets with large competition over to the empty ones, craving for attention. Is there any way to move to a standard global licence, as you say? Perhaps shouldn't some of the EU organs do something? I found out that even the most active non profic organisations didn't achieve much in this area. Do you think it is possible to organize an EU wide petition against this and that it would have any impact? I actually already considered it (because anyone can start one and in some countries, such as mine, every public institution is oblidged to at least answer). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6401 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 8 of 28 30 August 2013 at 3:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for reminding that I should write to the Portuguese store from which I couldn't download a paid e-book. I hope it was just a broken link. (Their free downloads went through okay)
Is it a good or bad idea to mention that I've tried to use the link in Finland as well? I was hoping it would work within the EU at least. Has anyone been able to get a refund in a similar situation? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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