Will Canadians be forced to use Amazon.ca to buy Kindle Books?

Jan 22 Update: After speaking to Amazon Kindle support they informed us that this change was not their doing. They said a change like this would have been made by the publisher only. One of the major publishers affected responded back to me saying, “It certainly wasn’t our intentional doing; although it may be a side-effect of our pricing model. I’ll investigate and see what I can do.” Though we hope this issue gets resolved, we wouldn’t count on it. As of yesterday we have begun linking to both the Amazon.com and Amazon.ca websites for all deals.

In December 2012 Amazon announced that it had launched their Kindle Store for Canadians on Amazon.ca. Previous to it launching Canadians have been able to buy all their Kindle Books on the main Amazon.com website. Canadians can continue to use Amazon.com or now choose to move their Kindle account to Amazon.ca but you cannot purchase books on both sites.

We’ve noticed some recent developments that lead us to believe Amazon may be forcing Canadians to switch their accounts over to Amazon.ca.

When we search some of the large Christian book publishers such as Zondervan (HarperCollins) or FaithWords (Hachette) we notice that their titles are no longer found on Amazon.com if you’re in Canada. When you do that same search on Amazon.ca all titles appear as normal.

When instead of searching you click on a direct link to a book from one of the affected publishers it will say it’s “Pricing information not available” (Amazon.com). When you change the URL to .ca the e-book will show as available but you’ll only be able to proceed with the purchase if you move your account over to that site.

We’ll be contacting Amazon and speaking with the affected publishers on Monday for clarity. As always, we’ll keep you posted.