Why are Canadians being left out of many Kindle deals?

 Jan 19/13 UPDATE: As of right now every deal that we would expect to be free/discounted for Canada that originally wasn’t, now is. This fix also affected multiple publishers which is fantastic news. We are hopeful that this is the end of the two week drought on Canadian deals. The next two days should confirm that as new books are  put on sale. Feel free to browse through our free/discounted sections and pick up any of the deals you missed.

E-books have territory restrictions, which means that both Amazon and the book publisher (depending on the agreement) have the authority to set the price and availability differently in each region. Since we’ve started we’ve always tracked deal prices for both Canada and the United States. There have always been deals available only to certain regions but most have been valid for all of North America. Since January 1, 2013 something has changed. An unusual amount of deals are no longer available to Canadians, including regular promotions that have been available previous to Jan 1st. So, what happened?

Our Role
Before we answer that question it’s very important that we explain our role in this process. The decision of which books go on sale, the price it will be listed at and which regions it’s valid for are not decisions we make. We’re not a website that MAKES deals, we’re a website that FINDS deals. We desire that no one be left out of a great deal, especially Canada since that is the country we’re based out of. However, the decision is not ours.

What’s happening?
Every time we notice a region error, we make sure to alert the publisher. Their response back to us indicates that the problem is with Amazon, not them. When the publisher hears from us about the error they respond back that they’ll get in touch with Amazon to rectify the situation. With their help we’ve seen a few books that have been corrected a few days later, but most remain unchanged. On top of that, the new promos continue to start as available for Americans only.

Today after speaking with David C. Cook they issued this statement by e-mail.

A note for our Canadian readers: Amazon is currently not offering our free eBooks on their Canadian store. We hope to have this resolved soon, but in the meantime, the free downloads will be available on iTunes Canada and other participating retailers.

So to all of our Canadian readership, we’re really sorry that you’re missing out on some great deals. There are still many deals that are available to you and we are optimistic that this issue will be rectified. We’ll keep you up-to-date with any further developments. Stick with us.