Numerous blogs are reporting that a Kindle store is now live at Amazon.ca. Before we all get too excited, I should clarify that this looks to be e-books only. While apps for various platforms are listed, there are no hardware Kindles on offer, and when I went looking for them on the main Amazon.ca page, I was redirected to the American mothership.

But there are some welcome content offerings this new store brings to Canada: We can access the Kindle Singles now, and there is a reasonably large and well-organized selection of French e-books, which some of us have long been coveting. And, like the Canadian Kobo store, they are highlighting local authors. I’m not sure a legend like Alice Munro needs the front-page push necessarily, but it’s a start. And a ‘Canadian Bestsellers’ feature spotlights authors such as Rawi Hage and Tanis Rideout who are well worth a read.

I have some questions on how this is all going to work, exactly. If you need a .com account to buy a hardware Kindle, are you going to want to register separately for a .ca account too? And will features such as Wish List and Recommendations, which depend on your purchase history, carry over? My suspicion is they will not.

So, as someone who is already using the main Amazon.com store and who has an established library there, I am not seeing the incentive for me to switch over to the new Canadian version. I just hope they don’t make me do it—or that if they do, they have a protocol in place to transfer my stuff.

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"I’m a journalist, a teacher and an e-book fiend. I work as a French teacher at a K-3 private school. I use drama, music, puppets, props and all manner of tech in my job, and I love it. I enjoy moving between all the classes and having a relationship with each child in the school. Kids are hilarious, and I enjoy watching them grow and learn. My current device of choice for reading is my Amazon Kindle Touch, but I have owned or used devices by Sony, Kobo, Aluratek and others. I also read on my tablet devices using the Kindle app, and I enjoy synching between them, so that I’m always up to date no matter where I am or what I have with me."

5 COMMENTS

  1. I see how it works: if you buy (when it becomes available) Sheila Fisher’s The Selected Canterbury Tales: A New Verse Translation from amazon.com it is $9.99; from amazon.ca it’s $9.93 + 13% tax. I’d rather pay no tax and get it from amazon.com.

  2. A number of publishers already charge full Canadian taxes at Amazon.com. Case in point: Harper Collins groups. Louse Penny “A Beautiful Mystery” is $16.50US at Amazon.com and $13.99CAN + tax at Amazon.ca (or Kobo) . This has been going on for a year at least.

    There is no issue having both an account at amazon.com and amazon.ca (and amazon.co.uk for that matter). It’s all one seamless thing. For convenience, you can transfer all your .com ebooks to .ca now, which makes a lot of sense. But, you don’t have to (yet). In other countries, Amazon restricts you to buying ebooks locally at the store level (for Canadians, Amazon handles this at the account level on .com).

    I’ll likely transfer my books over at some point.

    And I’d expect at some point Amazon will sell Kindles directly from .ca but the current system works really well (expect for free shipping) and they don’t have to carry duplicate inventory for Canada. Now … when do we get the cloud based services for apps, mp3s, videos and Amazon Prime? (Living in Toronto I already get next day shipping for “standard” free rates so I don’t want to mess that up.)

  3. Yes! A great read for less is THE CALENDAR BEGINS (A 12-21-12 Novella) by T. Lee Cook. Title is a bit misleading – the novella is set to start at an End of the World party. When the world doesn’t end well then it gets exciting. Great fun, mystery, all ages. Characters range from about 9 yrs old to 70+.

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