I’m wondering if Amazon has a secret agenda and if it’s trying to take over the world…one book at a time. They’ve opened an Australian Kindle store where you can get all your Kindle goodness (or badness depending on how you view Kindle and Amazon) at an Australian url and for Australian dollars.
It’s a fair bet the Australian booksellers don’t like this move as Amazon tend to have fairly low prices and can undercut many local booksellers. It does mean if you’re a Kindle addict you’ll be able to pay Australian dollars and the indication there is that Amazon Australia will actually pay taxes on their work here but I wouldn’t hold your breath as they are such a big corporation I’m sure they’ll be able to duck out of that as well. I understand they have a .com.au and in order to get a .com.au you need to have an ABN and you should only be able to get one of those if you’re running a business in Australia but I’m a little cynical here and I know it only takes a front person to create a company that looks like it trades here when in reality it doesn’t. I will continue only buying free books from them and buy all my non-free books elsewhere.
And what’s with the prices they have? Here’s a Christos Tsiolkas I found there.
It has a digital list price of $31.95! For an ebook! Is that the real price set by the publishers or an inflated price set by Amazon? Then they have a Kindle price of $10.07 including taxes (if applicable) with a saving of 68%. If they can list it at that low price why is the original price so high? Technically I know the answer to that question but I’m asking it anyway, it’s what’s called a loss leader where they sucker you in to buy something at a low price and then entice you to buy other stuff. I’ve heard that books are actually Amazon’s loss leader and that their real money is in the other goods so I’d guess they’ve opened this shop with books only to sucker people in and get them to buy books now to soften us up for buying other goods when they’re able to stock them here.
I know, call me cynical.