I did something a little momentous today—I finally caved to Amazon’s repeated suggestions that I move my account over to Amazon.ca. I did it in part because the Canadian dollar isn’t so strong right now and I didn’t want to get dinged on the exchange rate, and in part because I want to sell on the Kindle store and figured that a .ca account may simplify that process for me.
But mostly, I did it because I wanted to try out Kindle Unlimited. There is a 30-day free trial option, and I wanted to look.
And…how did it go? Smooth, very smooth. It was pretty much one click to change it over, and my other Kindle books—and personal content—seemed intact when I switched over. My Kindle recognized the change when I turned it on and the store now says .ca on it, but other than that, my books and annotations and bookmarks seemed right where I left them.
The Kindle Unlimited thing was pretty much one-click too—since Amazon already has all my information, they didn’t need to ask me any questions. I just ticked the box and was ready to borrow.
Smooth, Amazon. So far, so good!
Did Amazon really bug you about moving? It’s none of their business where you shop—or at least is should be none of their business. That’s yet another illustration of Amazon control-freakery in action. If the company had a slogan, it’d be “You do it our way.”
That’s particularly true for authors.
Apple’s iBooks makes a country move quite easy On the iBooks Store page, simply click on the flag-circle in the lower right. A new page appears that displays over a hundred countries. It’s so easy, it’s a good way to check on how your books are being sold around the world.
That said, I doubt Apple makes “repeated suggestions” to their customers in an effort to get them to “cave.”
I made the switch a couple of years ago and never looked back. I never understood the fuss.
Update: the only side effect I have found so far is that Goodreads will no longer show my unshelved Kindle books. I used to have an option to add my Kindle books and it would show me a list of any I haven’t shelved. Although my Kindle books all transferred over to the .ca account, and the print books I ordered off the .ca site all merged over too, the Kindle books aren’t showing up when I sign into Goodreads.
Guess what? Amazon is now suggesting me (a Hong Kong user) to move to amazon.cn,, which used Simplified Chinese. Simplified Chinese is not the de jure or de facto language in Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, we use traditional Chinese. In order to understand Simplified Chinese and the China language terms used there, one have to learn it. Also, I checked the price of English books sold there. Yes, it is much higher than the price in Amazon US.
Of course, many English books are not on amazon.cn. They may be censored or for some other reasons cannot be found. What are they thinking? I can immediately quit Amazon as many websites are selling ebooks and it is easy to destroy the DRM and put them in my Kindle.