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Comment by shangaslammi | Hacker News Reader

This specific complaint is about Amazon though. Even if a publisher sets the exact same price for every region, Amazon sometimes adds their own "Whispernet tax" of about $2 + VAT. They seem to be gradually phasing it out now, but for the longest time, there were e.g. no free books outside the US, because even books listed as "free" actually cost a minimum of $2 + tax.

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This is because all kindles in mainland Europe all have (edit) AT&T SIMs in them. It costs Amazon SIGNIFICANTLY more for you to use whispernet, because you are constantly roaming. The reason you pay the tax if you buy it on something other than the kindle itself is because at some point you could sync it on to your kindle, though archived items.

Sure, except that even Kindles that are wi-fi only had to pay the extra $2, not to mention those reading only on the PC or mobile app. It was a stupid system, but as I said, they are fortunately phasing the whole thing out now, and many books already have pricing parity (well, excluding VAT, but that's not Amazon's fault).

Strange. When I got my Kindle, it sounded like the "Whispernet tax" only applied when you bought books on the Kindle (so they were actually using Whispernet) outside of your home country. In other words, I'd be charged for Whispernet when using my US Kindle in Europe, but there would be no charge when I'm home (and there would be no charge if I bought via amazon.com and transferred via USB).

I had expected that the converse was true as well (a European would be charged for Whispernet in the US, but not in their home country and not when using USB). Since that isn't the case, I agree that sucks. I'm also more than a little surprised since it doesn't seem plausibly related to any actual cost Amazon bears.

FWIW, I'm in the UK and I've never heard of this whispernet tax before. Free books have been free ever since I got it (November). That might be related to there being a distinct "UK" edition of the kindle.

If you are in the EU but outside the UK (and I think Germany), you have to order books from Amazon.com. A free book costs $2 to deliver over whispernet

Yes, the most annoying thing is you have to pay the Whispernet tax even if you don't have a Kindle and just want to read books online or on your iPad.

Well, if you're buying a classic book that's "free", you can often find the exact book that Amazon's "selling" at Project Gutenberg. Download to computer, copy to Kindle, done.

Of course that's not the easiest way, and you can't do it "on the go", but a little preplanning will get you a bookshelf of books already queued up.

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