Looking For Some Advice From Non-U.S. Readers of eBooks

You’d have to be living under a rock not to realize that ebook market growth is skyrocketing across the globe. I think that’s a good thing for readers everywhere, and it’s also a great potential opportunity for authors like myself. Of course, the trick is to know what ebook formats/devices and retailers people are using, along with a couple other tidbits of information. That’s where I’m hoping that you, my friend, can lend me a hand.


Now, I’m going to set aside the language and translation issue for the moment, as that’s a much bigger issue. What I’d like to ask is that if you live outside the United States and read books in English (either as a primary or secondary language), please leave me a comment here with a bit of info:



The country you’re living in
Your favorite ebook retail site(s)
How you typically discover books you’d like to read
The typical price (or range of prices) in your currency of the books you buy
Any other comments you might care to make on the topic (and suggestions are definitely welcome!)

Depending on the number of responses, I’ll consolidate the results in a follow-on post.


Many thanks in advance should you decide to help me out with this!


P.S. Please feel free to forward this on to any friends you know who might like to add their input.

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Published on December 07, 2012 06:50
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message 1: by Samb (new)

Samb Hi Michael,

I live in Canada, my favourite ebook retail site is Kobo.
I usually discover books at the Kobo site or by following authors like yourself on Twitter.
I'll pay up to $15 Cdn if the book is only in hardcover, but expect less if it is only ebook format.


message 2: by Clayton (new)

Clayton Hi Michael,

I live in China, and I get most of my eBooks off of Amazon. Primarily because of all the really great free books I have been getting by following the RSS feed for http://www.daily-free-ebooks.com/. (Every now and then I spend a few dollars on a book, most recently "Wool".) The combination of Amazon + daily-free-ebooks.com has been so fruitful that I frankly have accumulated a backlog of probably a couple years worth of reading already.


message 3: by Boyan (new)

Boyan Hi Michael,

I live in Bulgaria and I usually get books in English from Amazon because I have a Kindle Touch and love the whispersync feature.

My source for new books are my friends and family for classic literature and sites like goodreads and shelfari for newer titles. I found "In Her Name" on a site featuring free books from Amazon.

The price range range of the books in my library is a little wide and quite high for Bulgarian standard, because I work and study in the field of computer science and read a lot of tech related books, but let's say something between: $5-$25 ( 7.5 bgn - 37(40) bgn ). The usual price for a hardcover books here is around $10 ( 15 bgn ).

P.S. I am just heading to get the "Redemption" trilogy after just finishing "The Last War".


message 4: by Leo (new)

Leo Stableford Hi Michael,

I live in the UK and I get my books from Amazon.co.uk

I'm a massive enthusiast about the new world of self-publishing so I'm getting books from Twitter feeds etc. In my friendship group I'm the self-publishing evangelist so I actively hunt down new stuff to read particularly genre fiction.

I would probably insta-buy any title I was interested in that cost less than 4GBP (Roughly 6USD) and as there's such a wealth of that material something has to really engage me if it's above that price point. It takes me between 2 and 4 weeks to read a book and I always want to review it afterwards for my blog.

I'm a genre writer, which is why I like genre fiction. I'm particularly interested in pulpy things, hard boiled, space opera, swashbuckling, Westerns all that stuff. Every time I start in on another self-published genre work I'm always rooting for it to be great because the better self-published stuff is as a whole thing the better for all the good self-published authors.


message 5: by Michael (new)

Michael Thanks for the comments so far, folks - appreciate you taking the time to do that! Keep 'em coming! :-)


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