This is a pretty interesting ‘price-hack’ that you can use to get your Kindle books really *really* cheap. Amazon has just launched the kindle store in India. However, as books in India are often cheaper than books in other countries, the prices on the Kindle store too reflect local expectations.
The result is an interesting situation. You can buy your Kindle books from Amazon India and get them much cheaper! How cheap are we talking about here ? 50% or more!
If you compare the prices for Kindle books on Amazon.com and Amazon.in – you will find that the prices sometimes differ by over 50% (India being cheaper). Now, for a digital book it doesn’t really matter which ‘edition’ you buy. You don’t get a glossy paperback or any other extras, it’s the text that matters most and this remains the same across versions.
I made some simple comparisons:
12th of Never – US Pre Order
12th of Never India – Over 70% Cheaper!
Dan Browns Inferno
Dan Brown's Inferno – India over 70% cheaper!
Most kindle books on the Amazon India store beat their US counterparts by around 70%. That is a HUGE difference in price! What’s more, you DO NOT need an Indian address to buy these books!
How to buy
Here’s how you go about buying your books at amazing discounted prices! All you have to do is go to your account settings on Amazon.com. Click on “Manage Your Kindle”, then go to “Country Settings” and under Actions change your country to India.
Now, you can go to Amazon.in and browse for your kindle books. When you click purchase, you will be sent to amazon.com with the updated price and you can purchase your books from there with the new Indian prices!
This does not affect your existing Kindle purchases and you can always switch your country back if you find that some title is unavailable in the Amazon India Kindle Store.
So what are you waiting for ?
Time to get some Kindle titles!
I’m just wondering why in India books are cheaper, may it be physical or electronic. The price is really half or much less than others in your photos. Thanks for the tip, I may try that and see if it works.
My guess is: Pretty much because of market forces. Spending power in India was historically lower so what the publishers did was produce cheaper paperbacks. The quality of printing, covers, etc. was also always lower than equivalent international editions in the US/UK/etc. However, since people got used to lower prices Amazon has no choice but to price Kindle books at the same level – why would anyone buy a digital book if it were more expensive than a paperback ? Well, lucky for us that paper quality, cover quality, type quality, etc. are not issues in the digital age! :)
Oh man, this is brilliant! I just did a test on the “4hr work week” $9.99 on the US site and just over $6 on the IN site. This is great to know! Thanks for the awesome write up… I am off to buy some cheaper ebooks now :D
Amaaazing tip. My Kindle is one of my most essential pieces of backpacking kit and I read a hell of a lot so this will really save me money. Thank you!
It’s regular practice to have different prices for different countries. Prices are part of advertising psychology, they don’t reflect costs to produce the product! This is a common misconception. For maximizing revenue, it makes sense for all companies to sell their products in poorer countries for lower prices.
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The new procedure for this it seems is to go to your account settings and then click on Manage your Kindle, then Settings and then change your country. You must add a valid address just search Google for the format.
Best of luck.
iam not sure copyright holders will agree to selling books into india if this loophole exists. iam expecting amazon to do address or identity validations in future, or at worst indians will lose reduced price (via amazon)? Definitely watch this space.
Dosen’t work. Its frustrating that the same book costs $2 is india and $10 in USA and the print edition is $7. Stupid price grab by Amazon and publishers since there is no real printing costs for digital.
Two out of three books were more expensive on the India site. :(
Also its cheap in India because for 1 ebook sold in USA there will be 3 ebooks sold in India as the population is 10 times of US. So the margin is same or else more in India than in US.
Worked for me! I saved a total of $60 on two books! Thanks!
Doesn’t work anymore