Comments on: Amazon to B&N: I’ll see your UK and raise you an India

By: Bufo Calvin

Bufo Calvin — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 13:32:14 +0000

Thanks for writing, Rajbir!

That’s a lot easier than the USA, where there are something like 8,000 sales tax variations!

By: Rajbir Bhattacharjee

Rajbir Bhattacharjee — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 06:29:17 +0000

Hi Bufo,
VAT is the same across India.

By: Bufo Calvin

Bufo Calvin — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 13:05:26 +0000

Thanks for writing, Rajbir!

For people using KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) like me, the price conversion was supposedly automatic. We do have the option to change that price.

A couple of things come to mind as possibilities for a variation:

First, a publisher could have manually changed the price. One thing that would suggest that is if the differential is higher for one publisher than for another. I wouldn’t expect much variation within a single publisher’s list, although that could happen. If a book would have a higher demand in India than in the USA, it might make sense to price that book higher there. It’s possible royalty rates would be different for different authors there…a “brand name” author in India might get a higher rate than a newbie…even if they got the same rate in the USA.

Second, I don’t know how volatile the INR (Indian Rupee) to USD (United States Dollar) rate is. If they did the conversion over the course of a few days, could that account for the difference between a ten percent and fifteen percent increase?

Third, it’s possible that publishers from different countries have to pay different import fees in India.

I’m assuming that you were looking at the prices yourself? In the USA, we pay different sales tax in different parts of the country…you have VAT (Value Added Tax) in India, right? Is that consistent across the country?

By: Rajbir Bhattacharjee

Rajbir Bhattacharjee — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 05:34:08 +0000

Hey Bufo,
I did start seeing prices of books both in INR and USD. Funny thing is that the prices in INR are about 10-15% more than what they are in USD after conversion. If I make an international transaction, my credit card charges me 3% extra. I’m sure the additional 7-12 % is because of some tax, but then if it is so, then that should be constant? And it isn’t mentioned anywhere why the difference in price exists, and what duties and levies are included. Its rather confusing at the moment.

By: Bufo Calvin

Bufo Calvin — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 22:04:02 +0000

Thanks for writing, draegi!

Currently, the Kindles don’t support that character set. I do have a book in Hindi, but it’s a graphic novel and the pages are treated as images (where anything goes, of course).

I agree that Amazon needs to look at that…not just if they want to compete with the Pi reader in India, but in the USA as well.

I took a quick look: I don’t see any apps right offhand that would help for the Kindle Fire in the Amazon Appstore. It’s possible an app could be installed from a third party source.

By: draegi

draegi — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 20:18:14 +0000

Hi Bufo,

I am very impressed by this. My partner who is staying in Nepal (bordering on India) can now see the price for KDP items on the amazon.com store, (previously it said they were unavailable). The price for her seems to have defaulted to dollars though. Also the prices are more expensive – i think that must be because the wireless delivery charge would be much more. There’s no wireless coverage in nepal still, although there seems to be lots in india and bangladesh. But at least the option is open to buy now (even if only via usb/wifi).

Do you know if devanagari (the script for most of the indian languages) is supported by the kindle? I know cyrillic and chinese, korean and japanese are fine on the newest models, but not sure about devanagari. If not, that will be a key move which amazon will need to make soon, if they want to hold the market there.