For the ones that are seeing a different price. There is a small trick workaround for that. You can generate a real US address here: http://www.realusaaddress.com/ and make that your primary address. As you as shipping digital stuff it doesn't matter that it's not your real address. Prices of the Kindle store should drop immediately.
Watch out when making non digital purchases though that you select the correct address ;-)
Yes you can use a fake US address and set your Kindle country to the US, but Amazon monitors the IPs (and credit cards) you are buying from and after a few purchaes to your fake US address, they'll start sending you letters asking for proof you live there and eventually lock you out (force you to change back to your real country) if you can't provide them.
Amazon killed a coworker's Kindle Fire account, because he was forced to add a test credit card - you can't use Kindle Fire without an U.S. cc, which sucks.
using a proxy/vpn and buying yourself gift cards from another account should give you reasonable protection, yes. As long as you have enough gift card balance, Amazon won't ask you to add a Credit Card. But it's cumbersome, etc.
Amazon recently started blocking my Kindle purchases basing on the fact my IP locates me in Japan while my primary address is set to the USA. When I switched to the gift option (using the same account) it worked without any problem even though I was still using the same Polish credit card.
And..... bang! It's easier to pirate it, so I will. When it's difficult to give someone my money, I just won't bother.
I am well aware that the world of international publishing is a convoluted mess (Charles Stross covers it well over on antipope); I'm not sympathetic enough to that mess to be willing to get charged such disparate amounts.
Between my Kindle and iPad, I'd really like to never buy a physical book ever again. But then I still have four full book cases from before Kindle existed. I want to "upgrade" to ebooks, but I don't want to spend the money. At $3 each, I'd at least upgrade some of the better ones.
Is it allowed for all books? I've a few physical books that don't have digital versions, it would be nice to scan them and give the physical ones away.
I tried them and the results were not great. They didn't OCR it (though I think they do now?) and the resulting PDF was pretty much unreadable on my Kindle.
Some universities do this. (Well, mine did at least). I think normally you had to pay, but I new a few people who talked the university into doing it for free for them. They also give you back the original books, spiral bound (they cut the spines off them in order to scan them).
You may be able to find a local university willing to do this for non-students.
They have this system at my local bank branch (I assume it's worldwide though, I hope at least) that you bring in a bag of coins, dump them into the slot and in a few seconds you've got a receipt to get that credited to your bank account. This for books would be great! Books go in, epubs come out!
Perhaps, like purchasing a license to all forms of the work? I too would like to start purchasing ebooks, but used books are much cheaper than a kindle versions on amazon.
Awesome price, but worrisome for the state of high quality digital publications. I feel that this is worth much more than $2.99, and I am afraid that it will become a race to the floor .
Does anyone involved in print publications know what the cost distribution is on a book's sticker price?
Still a steal, but the painful part of this kind of opaque discriminatory pricing is that I would have bought it if it was $6 everywhere, but now I have to start wondering if I'm getting screwed (again( for being in/from "the wrong country".
For those unfamiliar with it, being confronted with the "you're from the wrong country" thing feels really, profoundly wrong and insulting, even if the difference is only 3 dollars.
I wonder if this is yet another example of Australian readers being shafted by parallel importation laws, so that Tim Winton can make a few extra bucks.
Given that Tim Winton piped up last time abolishing parallel import bans was floated, I'm going to go with ... Tim Winton.
It wasn't for his benefit, you understand. He was reluctantly arguing for the price of his novels to be artificially propped up so that other, less successful authors could also be propped up.
I bought 2 copies for $2.99. A friend in .ca told me he sees $31.99. I went there to gift him one. It was $4.99 by then. Gifted it anyway because it's was the best deal I ever had (It's worth the original price but it's a bit too far for me).
I have a Kindle connected to my account (My friend didn't) and I have a US address listed (I'm Sri Lankan).
Be warned that this is a very clunky e-book port -- they don't make much effort to adapt the sidebars and quotes to .mobi format, so you end up reading into the middle of them without realizing it.
At the normal price I'd be more concerned (.mobi doesn't seem that friendly to technical books to begin with), but for $3 I'd say it's far less of an issue.
This is really an excellent book. I feel like this book was the pivotal thing that really let me see how the small amount of programming I knew could be so much more with the practices preached in that book.
It took me from "OK I get how to program in Java, but how the heck do I build this cool stuff I see everyday?" to "oh, if I wanted to do that I can see pretty much how I would build it (regardless of language)"
Does anybody know of a good PDF version of this book? The only one I've found is at Safari Books Online, which is a subscription site with "tokens". It appears to let you download the book chapter for chapter.
I see $31.99 in Australia. The interesting thing though is that the link has a referral code in it. Maybe the submitter is trying to make some money on it with some bait and switch
?
I see $31.99 in Australia too... This is making me rage a little inside. It's a DIGITAL BOOK Amazon. DIGITAL. Bits. I know it's a little bit further to Australia but for the love of...
Amazon is like the Harvey Two-Face -- half amazing and half frustrating. I have a Kindle Fire in Australia, but as Australia isn't an official country yet, Amazon Market doesn't work. And by doesn't work I mean I can't even download free applications without an American credit card. Amazon support know this and just apologise.
When friends ask me about the Kindle Fire in Australia, I won't say good stuff about it. When it finally is released here, do you think they'll be it? No. They'll remember I said it was annoying for some reason. The reason doesn't matter. Bad is bad so they'll decide, many moons ago, that they're not getting it.
Amazon in Australia are horrible. For many, many reasons[1].
Not really a bait and switch but yeah I imagine they are trying to do just that. The referral code sets a cookie that lasts for anything that you buy for 24hrs from amazon.
It was reporting a price of $31.47 for me in Canada as well. I jumped on a US proxy and saw $2.99, then attempted to purchase. It wouldn't let me, and suggested I change the country associated with my Kindle application.
I changed the address to a US one, and the purchase went through. One of the positives of living in a border city with multiple shipping addresses, I guess.
Yep, US$31.99 here in Australia. I was going to re-buy it (I already have a hard copy), but I'll be damned if I'm going to at that price. Regional pricing is such a scam.
I'm midway through this book and I'm fairly disappointed with it. It's not a bad book, bu much of the advice in it is common sense. And the parts that aren't common sense aren't very convincing (silly metaphors etc). Some of these 3-star reviews do a good job of reviewing it:
By the by, for those familiar with the pragmatic bookshelf, and were hoping to get it without DRM on that site, this was published by Addison Wesley, not pragmatic bookshelf.
One wonders how much the authors' experience publishing with Addison Wesley led to their founding Pragmatic Bookshelf.
I honestly think people that complain about referral link are just inherently negative. A free link, that takes you to a promotion, that saves you money, and you want to point out that the guy who brought this to your attention, is gaining something positive, at no expense to you or anyone. You probably pirated the book too.
The problem is, once you start that on HN you'll have yet another reason for overposters to post every vaguely relevant special they see. I didn't mind that the poster did it (so bought via the referral) but it'd be sad if this caught on, and I wouldn't post a link with a referral myself. The benefits around here are karma, mutual respect and increased collective wisdom. Let's not find ways to dilute those further.
To anyone outside the US, you can easily add a second US address (or any other country) to your kindle account.
Go to Your Account > Manage Your Kindle (in the Digital Content section) > Country Settings > Enter any US address and click update
You will now have US pricing. You can go ahead and add different addresses in other countries and you can simply switch between them to take advantage of different pricing, because Amazon remembers your previous addresses. The country you have selected has no effect at all on being able to download the book, you can still download from anywhere.
Yes. I loved this book, but didn't really get much out of it except affirmation of my own beliefs. I think it would be much more valuable for a new programmer, or a non-programmer who works with programmers, than for an experienced programmer.
Wow, so this is the first time I've seen one-click purchasing (It's not normally enabled for me). It's really disconcerting. Not that I want to (and it's only $3) but is there any way to cancel a one-click purchase? It's not obvious..
> Books you purchase from the Kindle Store are eligible for return and refund if we receive your request within seven days of the date of purchase. Once a refund is issued, you'll no longer have access to the book. To request a refund and return, visit Manage Your Kindle, click the actions tab for the title you'd like to return, and select "Return for refund."
I doubt if that will work. As per http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_2...
"If the giver and the recipient do not live in the same country, the book may not available to the recipient due to copyright restrictions. In these cases the recipient will be given the option to request an exchange for gift credit on their Amazon.com account during the redemption process, or they may contact Customer Service for assistance in exchanging the book."
The only workaround I see I declaring you have moved to the US. I work for a US corporation and with the company VPN I'm allowed to see the 2.99 $ price, but when I log in I'm told I can only buy titles from amazon.it.
So, no luck, we're stuck with 19 euros (which is still a good price though).
I just figured out how to do this. In "Manage your Kindle" option on your Amazon account, you can return any item that has been bought in the last 7 days.
Watch out when making non digital purchases though that you select the correct address ;-)