About time: Amazon started selling ebooks in Netherlands – Bright

After years of waiting, Amazon today began selling ebooks and Kindle ereaders in the Netherlands.

It took a long time, but Amazon opens Wednesday than finally a Dutch site, log Nu.nl and NRCQ. The site Amazon.nl went live Wednesday morning. The US e-commerce giant sells here at first only ebooks and Kindle ereaders. The offer: 20 000 Dutch digital books, 3 million in other languages.

Amazons Dutch collection is thus smaller than that of rival Bol.com that 30,000 English ebooks counts. The reason is that some publishers are reluctant to deal with Amazon in the sea, because the shop regularly in other countries stunt with the prices, to the dismay of publishers and authors. That leader pricing would not currently done in the Netherlands. Nevertheless, does not it.

For example, publishing Podium

Kindle ereaders and apps

Amazon has three ereaders, which can be ordered via the Dutch to German Amazon site: the cheapest Kindle costs 80 euros, the Kindle Paperwhite costs temporarily 100 (3G version 161 euros), and the new Kindle Voyage higher resolution costs 192 euros (3G version 253 euros)

<. p> The Kindle devices were ordered for Dutch, long through foreign sites but was waiting for the Dutch ebooks. According to Amazon the software update that makes navigation Dutch in ‘the coming weeks’ appears.

Amazon’s Kindle uses its own copy. The Kindle apps have also been translated into Dutch. Unlimited leesdienst Kindle Unlimited is not yet available in our country. If and when Amazon in the Netherlands will also sell other products, is not yet known. The Kindle launch is the first step.

A difficult country for Amazon

In the Netherlands, Amazon will not get easy, partly because the publishers rather ‘ anti-discounts’ are. Most Dutch publishers Moreover abandoned in recent years the use of copy protection (DRM). They only use digital watermarks.

This way you can with other Dutch webshops easy to read ebooks purchased on other devices and other apps. But Amazon wants you in the Kindle Store ebooks purchased just read via the Kindle apps and the Kindle devices. Dutch consumers are wary of such a “closed model”.

There is a big competitor in the form of Bol.com that recently a deal with ereaderfabrikant Kobo also more than 2 million international ebooks here sells. Although this is less than Amazon, but Dutch offerings at Bol.com then larger. And that will be for quite some Dutch readers still important

But Amazon also has its own advantages. Nice working apps and relatively good and cheap ereaders. Perhaps later followed also the Kindle tablets, or Amazons critically acclaimed first smartphone Fire Phone.

Update 12-11: new Dutch prices Kindle ereaders