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I am awfully disappointed with Amazon. I have seen the Kindle and I love the feel and functionality. I would really like to buy one and they’re available just up the road from where I live. So what’s holding me back? Incredibly, it’s lack of books. Sure, I can read the classics if that is what I was after but, to be honest, Treasure Island isn’t on my priority reading list at the moment. What I was hoping to buy were titles like Muriel Spark’s Memento Mori – only available for Irish readers from the US store and
at considerably more than the price of the paperback edition from Amazon in the UK. Also on my shopping list is the recently published Anti-Aging Beauty Bible (Jo Fairley and Sarah Stacey) but it seems there isn’t a Kindle edition available – or at least not available to Irish readers. Then I tried looking for Suza Francina’s The New Yoga for People over Fifty only to discover that, too, is not available for the Kindle in Ireland. There’s better news for Ian McEwan’s Solar which is listed at $9.85 in amazon.com this evening. That’s still more than I would have to pay my local book seller though where it’s included in a 3 for 2 deal at the moment. Choice is a fundamental requirement for book lovers such as myself. Price is also important. I am prepared to pay for the convenience of downloading books when and where it’s convenient for me to read them but I am also aware that printing and distribution costs have been stripped out of the supply line and I expect to see some recognition of that in the pricing. It is not okay, in my book, for a Kindle edition to cost more than it’s paperback equivalent. Let’s hope Amazon and the publishers manage to sort these matters out. I’m not the only book lover in Ireland eager to spend on Kindle editions which are perfect for commuting would save space on my book shelves. Finally, and no doubt, I’m not the first to point out it would also make more sense if Irish readers were purchasing from amazon.co.uk rather than amazon.com.
