# Buying Books on the UK Store for an American Kindle



## Marc Johnson (Feb 25, 2011)

Hi, because of a blog post I recently wrote, I was thinking of re-reading books in my childhood and finishing the series now. However, when I looked on Amazon, almost all the books are not available. Going to the author's website, I was able to see that they had links for the ebooks on the UK store and they're available there. I don't understand it all.

Anyhow, is it possible for me to buy books on Amazon's UK site and read them on my old G2 American Kindle? If so, how do you do that and what's involved?

Thanks for any help you can give me.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

I expect the difference has to do with differing copyright issues in the US vs the UK and who holds electronic rights.

You can, theoretically, unregister your kindle from your US account and register it to a UK account and then buy something. BUT the act of unregistering it and then re-registering it will remove all existing content since you're only allowed to have it registered to one account at a time -- even if you 'own' both of them.

PLUS -- Amazon checks to see if you're actually a resident of the country you say you are. So if you switch to UK without changing billing information, you'll likely get an email after a while asking "what's up?" They have to pay attention to this because of the various laws of the countries. You can be visiting the UK and buy stuff from the UK store without issue, but if you LIVE there and still have all US details, you basically have to prove that to them. And vice versa: if you live there and want to use the US store, you have to prove you're allowed as a US citizen. So it's not as straightforward as it might seem.

I suppose if you are legally allowed to use both stores -- Citizen of one country and resident of another -- and you have more than one kindle, you could make one your UK device and one your US device. But it's still essentially two separate accounts.

What you absolutely CAN do is click the "I want it on kindle" link in the US is store for all the books -- Amazon does pass that info along to the publisher.


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## HappyGuy (Nov 3, 2008)

You might try going to the publisher's web site and seeing if you can buy it directly from them, avoiding Amazon altogether. Sometimes that route is available and the book may be offered in one of the Kindle formats.


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## SusanCassidy (Nov 9, 2008)

It is not true that all content will be erased, if it is an e-ink Kindle.  On e-ink Kindles, the content stays.  On Fires, it disappears.


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## Marc Johnson (Feb 25, 2011)

Well, that sucks that I can't legally get these books. I don't know what Penguin is thinking about only having the books on the UK. 

That was a good idea about going to the site, but they don't have it or I don't see it.

What's a guy gotta do to read the Redwall series? Thanks for the help and info everybody. I guess I'll just play the waiting game as I don't want to have 20+ books on my shelves.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Marc Johnson said:


> Well, that sucks that I can't legally get these books. I don't know what Penguin is thinking about only having the books on the UK.
> 
> That was a good idea about going to the site, but they don't have it or I don't see it.
> 
> What's a guy gotta do to read the Redwall series? Thanks for the help and info everybody. I guess I'll just play the waiting game as I don't want to have 20+ books on my shelves.


It may be that Penguin doesn't have the rights in the US. A lot of UK published books end up with a different publisher when they are distributed in the US.

I did find some Redwall books in the US store -- but they're latter numbers of the series only.


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## HappyGuy (Nov 3, 2008)

Redwall! Oh, yeah. I didn't read them until I was in my 40s. Bought all of them in DTB. Kindle wasn't around then.


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## history_lover (Aug 9, 2010)

Ann in Arlington said:


> You can, theoretically, unregister your kindle from your US account and register it to a UK account and then buy something. BUT the act of unregistering it and then re-registering it will remove all existing content since you're only allowed to have it registered to one account at a time -- even if you 'own' both of them.


I thought that only happens with more recent Kindles? I remember deregistering my Kindle Keyboard and leaving a lot of my books on there and giving it to my mom. She registered it to her account and was still able to read all the books I'd left on there. So I would think that particularly with the G2 Kindle, your books from a previous account would still remain. I thought it was only with the Kindle Touch or Paperwhite that they finally made deregistering wipe it clean so no books remained.


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## SusanCassidy (Nov 9, 2008)

No, no e-ink Kindle wipes books when it is deregistered.  Don't worry.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

history_lover said:


> I thought that only happens with more recent Kindles? I remember deregistering my Kindle Keyboard and leaving a lot of my books on there and giving it to my mom. She registered it to her account and was still able to read all the books I'd left on there. So I would think that particularly with the G2 Kindle, your books from a previous account would still remain. I thought it was only with the Kindle Touch or Paperwhite that they finally made deregistering wipe it clean so no books remained.


Yes, up to the K3 for sure, that was the case. In fact, there was a lot of kindle switching within families to share books. But, according to a member here whom I trust, beginning with the first basic with no keyboard, it basically performs a factory reset when being registered. In the case I'm aware of, it was registered to one account and the owner was going to switch to a kids account to load some content her daughter was reading and, when she did, all HER content was gone. And when she put it back on her own account, the books she'd downloaded from her daughter's account didn't stick.

I've not personally tested it since then with newer devices.


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## Tatiana (Aug 20, 2010)

SusanCassidy said:


> No, no e-ink Kindle wipes books when it is deregistered. Don't worry.


Well it wiped my books off the device. On October 26, 2014, I de-registered my PW1 in preparation for gifting it to a friend. Doing that basically reset it to factory as it not only de-registered it but removed all my books and reset it as if it was new and unregistered.


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## Lou Harpr (Nov 5, 2014)

If the books are old enough for the copyright to have expires, you might find free copies of it floating around the internet. If not, you might still be able to find it on some other retailer's sight. It doesn't even have to be in mobi format. You can use Calibre to convert it, then sideload it to your Kindle.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Lou Harpr said:


> If the books are old enough for the copyright to have expires, you might find free copies of it floating around the internet. If not, you might still be able to find it on some other retailer's sight. *It doesn't even have to be in mobi format. You can use Calibre to convert it, then sideload it to your Kindle.*


Be careful with this: if there's copy protection you'd be, likely, in violation of the site's Terms of Service by converting it.


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## Lou Harpr (Nov 5, 2014)

Ann in Arlington said:


> Be careful with this: if there's copy protection you'd be, likely, in violation of the site's Terms of Service by converting it.


Yes, definitely. You should always check to copyright status of the book first. However, there are tons of books whose copyright expired, but publishers are still sell. Jane Austen, for example.


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## history_lover (Aug 9, 2010)

Ann in Arlington said:


> Yes, up to the K3 for sure, that was the case. In fact, there was a lot of kindle switching within families to share books. But, according to a member here whom I trust, beginning with the first basic with no keyboard, it basically performs a factory reset when being registered. In the case I'm aware of, it was registered to one account and the owner was going to switch to a kids account to load some content her daughter was reading and, when she did, all HER content was gone. And when she put it back on her own account, the books she'd downloaded from her daughter's account didn't stick.
> 
> I've not personally tested it since then with newer devices.


I think there's some confusion about what device the OP has. You seem to think it's the second generation "basic" Kindle with no keyboard? I assumed "old G2" meant the second generation Kindle released in 2009, pre-dating the Kindle Keyboard/K3 and basic Kindle. Maybe Marc can clarify what model he has.


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## Marc Johnson (Feb 25, 2011)

history_lover said:


> I think there's some confusion about what device the OP has. You seem to think it's the second generation "basic" Kindle with no keyboard? I assumed "old G2" meant the second generation Kindle released in 2009, pre-dating the Kindle Keyboard/K3 and basic Kindle. Maybe Marc can clarify what model he has.


I have a Kindle 2 if it helps. I also now have a Kindle Voyage!


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

With the 2nd Gen kindle . . . . you should be able to switch the device between accounts and not lose content from a different Amazon account.

With the Voyage, you will probably NOT be able to. (I'm basing this, as I said, on a report by a reputable source who tested it when the first basic kindle came out (2011) and am making the assumption that they've not changed it back.  )

The reason is that the ToS says the device can only be registered to one account at a time, and that books licensed to one account are not transferable to another. At some point they changed the sytem software to sort of enforce the second bit.

More to the point, though, when crossing international borders, is which country you are _allowed_ to have an account in. You need to be a citizen of the country or permanent resident and need to have a valid credit card from a bank in that country, as I understand it. You can change your country in MYC&D, but expect a query from Amazon about it, especially if you're accessing from the same place you always were.

If you're a dual citizen, or living outside your home country for a valid reason, you may be able to provide documentation to let you use your non-resident country's store as well as the resident country's.

But in no case will you be able to have a single kindle registered to both stores at the same time.

Such is my understanding, anyway. I admit I've not actually lived, or even traveled, outside the US since the advent of kindles and tested that bit.


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## John F (May 19, 2014)

Marc Johnson said:


> What's a guy gotta do to read the Redwall series?


You can buy the print editions from foreign Amazon.com web sites such as http://www.amazon.co.uk/ and make room for them on your shelves, if they're keepers. At least I've done it occasionally, no questions asked.


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