Purchasing ebooks in NZ

Hello! My husband and I will be moving to New Zealand next year and I'm looking for information about downloading digital books once we get there. After much research and comparison shopping I plan to get a Sony eReader, but their online store is accessible only in the US. What is your experience with ebooks? Where do you buy yours? Can you download them from websites that aren't based in NZ or Australia? I'm especially curious if you can purchase the digital version of a book that is available on the Amazon US site but isn't yet available on the Amazon Australia site. And for those in Auckland- do your libraries offer ebooks?

Any and all input is greatly appreciated- and I can't wait to start the big move!

Good query, librarianlost. A hasty bit of research and a query on Twitter hasn't produced any definitive answers. I can tell you that the Kindle isn't available for sale in New Zealand, but I don't know whether an existing Kindle user can download books to their Kindle in NZ.

A couple of links that may have useful information:

http://activitypress.com/ereport/

http://bit.ly/6My69U (dates from Jan 2010)

NZ publishers have been very cautious in producing e-books. Random House NZ was supposed to be bringing out e-books of some of its books, including one of mine, well over a year ago, but I've heard nothing more about that recently.

I have heard in the last few days of a New Zealand publisher who will soon start offering a proportion of its catalogue as e-books.

I'm very keen to find out what others know, because I'd like to know the answers to these questions myself!

Thank you so much for your response! I went ahead and emailed the editor at eReport on the off chance he's got some spare time to help :o)

The little that I've found out so far is that some websites that sell digital books use the mailing address of the credit card to determine if a person can buy from the site, others use the IP address. (So much for the WORLD wide web, eh?)

Hopefully someone else will chime in with their ebook reader experience. But I don't think you're missing anything re: the Kindle; Amazon needs to work on its relationships with publishers as well as re-think the exclusive format and not being able to share titles with other devices, computers, etc. Sony's readers have been around longer and are far more affordable, and support up to 12 formats! (That's the newest model, but even the simplest one can still handle 6 different kinds of files).

Thanks again for your links!

If I log into amazon.com, and go to the Kindle store, it puts me in the "Asia Pacific" region in terms of what I can purchase (I understand that it's relatively new to be able to do this). I haven't actually tried buying anything yet though (despite having the Kindle app on my iPhone). I also have Stanza on the iPhone, and have read a bunch of stuff with that - mainly project Gutenberg-type stuff, sourced through the links in Stanza, but a few other free things as well. And also things I've bought from www.pragprog.com (where you can download what you buy in any or all of PDF, epub (for Stanza etc), or mobi (for Kindle)) - but that's fairly specialised.

I emailed Amazon and basically the answer is no, digital downloads are limited to the US. For those interested in details, here's the response I got:

Kindle and Kindle DX (Global Wireless) models can only be purchased from Amazon.com and shipped to eligible countries. Visit the Kindle (Global Wireless) detail pages and find the "Live Outside the U.S" box where you can select your country to see if Kindle and Whispernet wireless service are available:

Kindle (Global Wireless): http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0015T963C/ Kindle DX (Global Wireless): http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0015TG12Q/

We continue to support our Amazon Upgrade program, which gives you digital access to the physical books you buy. More information is available on our Help page here:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=110744011

We also encourage you to visit http://www.mobipocket.com where you can find tens of thousands of the most popular eBook titles available for reading on computers and handheld devices.

Regarding eDocs:
There are two types of eDocs and thus two methods of reading them. For HTML eDocs, you can access the content through Your Media Library using a standard web browser. To read a .PDF eDoc, you must have the free reader software installed on the computer and then download the eDoc from Your Media Library after purchase.

Adobe Acrobat Reader is designed to read PDF (Portable Document Format) files. Please visit the following Help page for more information:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200249810

After you have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed, you are ready to access your document. Digital items you've ordered are available in Your Media Library on the Download tab. To access Your Media Library, visit http://www.amazon.com/library or access it through your account:

Click on Your Account at the top of any Amazon.com page.
In the "Where's My Stuff?" section at the top of the page, click on the "View Your Media Library" link.
Complete the sign-in process.
Locate the item on the Download tab of Your Media Library.
Due to import/export laws and other restrictions, we are only able to sell eDocs, Amazon Upgrade, Amazon Unbox videos, and other downloadable products to customers who use a credit or debit card issued by a U.S. bank with a U.S. billing address.

You must also located in the US while purchasing the content, hence you're unable to purchase eDocs when you're traveling out side of the US.

And electronic versions of books can only be purchased from Amazon.com and is not available from any of our international websites.

I've also included some additional information below that you may find helpful

Amazon cares about its international customers and is working on ways to improve our service and selection. We recently made Amazon MP3 Music Downloads available on our United Kingdom, German, and France sites at:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/mp3 http://www.amazon.de/mp3 http://www.amazon.fr/mp3

We're working to build a successful store on Amazon.com and hope to adapt it to our other websites in the future. Please continue to check back for additional information on supported locations.

Thanks for your understanding.

Even though the news is not encouraging, thanks for that information!

Just saw this news article which seems to indicate there will be a few e-book options in NZ soon.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/3729086/Are-e-books-green-No-op...

I got an email from Whitcoulls today, detailing their e-reader called Kobo. According to their site, you don't have to buy the Kobo but can download to your smart phone, pc etc as long as it supports pdf (I think). If you are interested look at www.whitcoulls.co.nz. They have over 10,000 e-books and, although at a quick glance there seems to be a lot of erotica, it also has a lot of other stuff.

Hope this helps.

A few days ago, I thought I'd try it out. Went to www.amazon.com, was still logged in (have bought physical items there in the past), my region was still set to Asia-Pacific on the Kindle store (I looked at the list - Australia was in there as a separate region but not NZ). I saw somewhere that about 380,000 kindle books are available to you if you're in the Asia-Pacific region, which is somewhere between 2/3 and 3/4 of the kindle books available in the US region.

I found something I wanted and clicked on 1-click - it asked me to pick a credit card - my NZ credit card was the only one in the list (as it's my only credit card) so I chose that one. Purchased the item to download to the Kindle app on my iPhone - the email receipt included my NZ street address as the Billing address - and starting reading it shortly thereafter (I'd already gone to bed and was doing all this on the iPhone). I've since downloaded another copy to the Kindle application on my Mac desktop computer.

Thank you, fabtk, otakuu, and northislander! There is a listserv for NZ libraries, http://lists.vuw.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nz-libs where someone just started a thread about the new Kobo ereader. I haven't participated on the list yet so I haven't asked for permission to re-post their comments, but if you join you can search the archives.

From the sound of it, there will be many more options available! Now I have to find a Kobo to play with :o)

Thanks again to everyone!

I've bought ebooks for years from Fictionwise and also directly from some publishers like Baen without an issue. I've read them on a Palm Pilot and an ipaq Pocket PC but right now I'm using the Foxit eSlick, which I bought online from Fictionwise.

I haven't tried the Kobo yet but I've been thinking about checking it out- it would depend on what book formats it reads because the eSlick has a pretty wide range of formats it will accept so I can drop the various books I've bought over the years on it without having to convert. But eInk is totally worth it, you notice the eye strain if you go back to a backlit device.

Amazon now official released New Kindle 4 , Kindle 3 and Kindle 3g in New Zealand.
BUt the one i want is Kindle touch - So i found the way to get that in NZ here http://www.ereadernewzealand.com

Hope this help for anyone that want kindle touch in NZ.

I am new to E Readers having just purchased a Sony.
All I know is that NZ libraries are not compatible with Kindle, and the Sony ER requires their own software to be downloaded to be able to borrow from our libraries.

A lovely library staff member (young enough to be my daughter) was very patient with me and talked me through the whole process over the phone. At this stage I am only borrowing from the library, haven't tried any other sites yet.