{"id":896,"date":"2007-05-14T11:58:13","date_gmt":"2007-05-14T15:58:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2007\/05\/14\/amazonca-british-books-what-the-hell\/"},"modified":"2008-08-03T22:56:54","modified_gmt":"2008-08-04T02:56:54","slug":"amazonca-british-books-what-the-hell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2007\/05\/14\/amazonca-british-books-what-the-hell\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon.ca, British Books, What The Hell?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ever since Amazon.ca<\/a> opened, I’ve been in a kind of book-buyer’s bliss. The Canadian variant of Amazon has a broader selection than native Chapters<\/a>, and typically has lower prices–all good stuff.<\/p>\n

Even better, though, Amazon.ca<\/a> put me in a position to leverage my special status as a Canadian lover of books: we can get both American and British editions from local distributors. And, with Amazon.ca<\/a>, I was in a position to easily get British hard covers at a substantial discount without paying any international shipping. Since I fairly regularly (at least several times a year) want to get a British hardcover–when either there will be no North American hard cover, or the North American one will be significantly later in publication–this is a big plus.<\/p>\n

At least it was until just recently. I don’t know what happened, but suddenly British hard covers are ridiculously expensive.<\/p>\n

\"Selling<\/a>An example: I just got an email from Amazon.co.uk<\/a> notifying me that I can now pre-order Justina Robson<\/a>‘s latest novel Selling Out<\/a> (sequel to Keep It Real<\/a>, which I discussed at some length earlier<\/a>). I immediately grabbed the ISBN from the Amazon.co.uk page, popped over to Amazon.ca and searched for the book. And there it is<\/a>. For FORTY-TWO<\/strong> freaking dollars, and no discount–I’m kind of used to at least a 30% discount from Amazon, and often 40%. (A comparable hardcover–at least in terms of size\/audience\/publisher–work, say John Meaney’s Resolution<\/a>, from Justina’s North American publisher<\/a> lists at Amazon.ca for less than $20 after discount. That’s roughly where I expect new hardcovers to be at Amazon.ca.)<\/p>\n

So, what’s up with that? I should totally write Amazon a letter.<\/p>\n

Here’s the kicker. At Amazon.co.uk the book lists for \u00a312.53<\/a>, which is (at today’s exchange rate<\/a>) about $27.50 Canadian. So it’s not only that the book isn’t discounted, it’s that Amazon.ca has marked it up $15, or to look at it even more offensively, 55%<\/strong>, from the price at Amazon.co.uk. It is significantly cheaper for me to order the book from the UK and pay international shipping–surely this is madness?<\/p>\n

(Of course I don’t really have an alternative if I want the hard cover–Chapters doesn’t carry the book<\/a>, US Amazon doesn’t carry the book<\/a>, and if I wait and try to buy it on the after market I’m going to pay through the nose. Amazon.ca’s cheapest seller for the first volume HC is around $80, and ABE’s North American copies<\/a> start at $50 before shipping.)<\/p>\n

\"Ink\"<\/a>It’s not just Robson. I just went through the same thing with Hal Duncan<\/a>‘s Ink<\/a>. When Vellum<\/a> came out, I ordered the British HC<\/a> from Amazon.ca. It cost me $24.39–it’s still listed now<\/a> at the slightly better $23.28 after a 37% discount. So, naturally, I wanted to get the followup also in hardcover, and expected to pay roughly the amount. Except, guess what? Ink has no discount, and runs $40+<\/a>. (Ink hardcover at Amazon.co.uk<\/a> is \u00a311.17 which works out<\/a> to $24.50CAN.)<\/p>\n

It’s not all British HCs, though. The British HC of John Meaney’s latest<\/a>, for example, is offered at the sort of price I expect.<\/p>\n

There’s got to be something going on behind the scenes to drive this. I’m sure I’ll eventually find out some distributor went belly-up, and suddenly half the British books (at least the SF ones) look to Amazon’s computer like small press \/ special order titles, or something. I wish I knew what it was, so I would know how to get around it.<\/p>\n

I’m definitely writing them a letter. And in the meantime, I guess I’m queueing up stuff to order from the UK, so that I can minimize shipping costs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ever since Amazon.ca opened, I’ve been in a kind of book-buyer’s bliss. The Canadian variant of Amazon has a broader selection than native Chapters, and typically has lower prices–all good stuff. Even better, though, Amazon.ca put me in a position to leverage my special status as a Canadian lover of books: we can get both American and British editions from… Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,458,62,265,325,99],"class_list":["post-896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-amazon","tag-books","tag-cross-border","tag-economics","tag-justina-robson","tag-things-to-buy","xfolkentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5UQvw-es","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=896"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1375,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896\/revisions\/1375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}