To be cross with Amazon in restricting my ebook choice?

[tb]

I'm thinking about getting a kindle at the moment.

Amazon's uk site has loads of free/cheap ebooks BUT I live in France and their '.fr' site doesn't have so many, they're dearer, or just aren't there at all.

The UK site tells me that I'm not eligible to download loads of them because I'm not in the UK.

What about the fecking single market that we used to hear so much about?

YANBU. I'm in Oz and although I can buy books from the UK (though they have stopped free shipping now everyone is hooked) I can't buy e-books. The .com site is much more limited. Really pisses me off.

I just use my old address.

google 'torrenting' - you may find the books you want can be er..................well ................ not sure of the legalities.

Really I live in Belgium and buy all my books from the uk site with no problem.

I think torrenting is such a terrible thing, really I do! I'd never ever do it. No, not me. I have a kindle and I would never do such a horrible illegal thing that, well, could quite possibly cause a book war!

If I ever were to look for such a website, I would hope that one of my fellow mumsnetters who would also NEVER do such a thing would PM me the details of a website that wouldn't embed by net book with viruses and pictures of erections and jizz.

Jizzing Kindles.

If you self publish with Amazon it gives you the choice of being in all the market places, but you do have to tick the box for France, Germany etc. I would have thought that people automatically would tick all of them. So hopefully, fingers crossed, more will start appearing for you.

Unless there are people that only think to tick the one for the US. Have you tried going through the US site? That may be a bit more helpful. The workings of the US are always a bit of a mystery to me.

The other thing is that you can get programmes to do the job of a kindle on the pc, and an app to have a kindle type reader on a smartphone. So you could see if you are comfortable with reading like that before you pay out for the kindle. And whether that would get round the filters is anyone's guess!

I bought mine while in the uk and set it all up there, the bank card I use is also a uk one, maybe this is why. It did at some point in set up ask which country and I chose uk.

It's nothing to do with Amazon, it's to do with the publishing agreements from the publisher.

(Except, as mentioned above, where Amazon is the publisher.)

There are plenty of free (legal!) eBooks available to download through torrenting or various websites. (I know it doesn't help the op much!)
You can use calibre software to convert them into kindle books.

Samuel I would also like to be able to avoid such sites and would also hope that a MNetter would be able to perhaps PM me the relevant sites so I too could perhaps, maybe, add them to my AV software as websites to block in the event that, if, in theory you understand, I ever clicked on one by accident, Mr Officer PC Sir Your Worshipfullness........

www.gutenberg.org/
Is a great site with most classics available for free

There are loads of free legal book websites, Project Gutenburg is good, that's the main one, but you can google free e books and come up with a lot!

I take books I want from other people with kindles or e-readers. I have Calibre which converts any book into a format my kindle can read so I have a bigger selection available too so that's always an option if you know people with e-readers!

change your billing address to a uk address. get a uk friend (give them money) to buy you an amazon gift voucher. apply to account and make sure using amazon.co.uk should work.

I use the amazon us site with my normal credit card and a made-up (aleit plausible) US address. It doesn't need to be a real address because nothing will ever get sent there.

shinybaubles - another kindle owner in Belgium here. Yep - I have my account configured to the UK but I pay for my purchases on my Belgian credit card. I think I just chose which country to use on the "manage your kindle" section. Will check...........

.... see how busy I am! Just checked - go into your manage your kindle setting and there is a link called Country Settings.

The Ultimate E Book Library (google TUEBL) has free books (so I've heard [ahem]). Not that I'm recommending it or anything, you understand.

you just need an address in the uk and a uk email. Everyone does it.

I don't have an address in the UK, and have a belgian email address and credit card - you just go into your Kindle account and change the country settings to UK.

Yeah, it's not amazon's fault. It's a licensing/publishing issue. Archaic and ridiculous, but we're stuck with it for a while until someone drags the industry kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

A UK postal address will do it. As far as Amazon is concerned, my dad in the Netherlands actually lives at my address, because then he can buy kindle books on the UK site....

Thanks for the advice on changing the country setting, not so discouraging after all

I live in France too but use my mum's UK address as the whole point of getting a kindle was to make it easier to get hold of English books! I can't buy from the French site now but it's far too expensive anyway.