I have an ebook reader and I love it to bits. I have been using it for years to read free (public domain) books in Russian, French and German. Recently, however, people have started to tell me off for living in the nineteenth century. They suggest I buy books written more recently. Apparently you can buy them from modern web sites like Amazon.
Here’s the problem: Amazon know I live in the UK, and they will only sell me ebooks from their UK store which is pants for foreign language books.
Can anyone suggest to me an easy way to buy modern, non-English language books without having to emigrate?
You can buy e-books from other websites than Amazon, e.g. www.libri.de for German, www.fnac.com for French. However, you should also find several foreign books on Amazon. Try searching for “French edition” or “German edition”. Anyway, I think that even reading 19th-century novels helps a lot.
Amazon often has free kindle books to download, some is recent work by author trying to promote their own work. You just have to look a little harder for a language that you would like. I am in Canada and it lets me download from the American site.
@Elric: “…There’s nothing wrong with the nineteenth century. I’ve lived there a good chunk of my life, and in several different countries. ;-)”
You’re…a vampire!? :-0
@SBT’Pot: “Here’s the problem: Amazon know I live in the UK, and they will only sell me ebooks from their UK store which is pants for foreign language books.”
I’ve bought absolutely tons of stuff from Amazon.de without any problems. (I’ve never attempted to buy any e-books from Amazon, however.)
As Mike says, one can also very often find a foreign title on Amazon.co.uk simply by searching with the original title.
Also make sure you pay attention to the DRM of the ebooks you’re buying if you want to be able to read them on LingQ you’ll need to get DRM free ones. I believe http://www.kobobooks.com/ has some modern ebooks without DRM protection but you’ll have to check each book individually before you buy it. Kobo has books in German, French and a couple other languages as well. I’m not sure how well it works outside of North America though.
Helen, you might try www.setbook.eu . I have ordered from their U.S. affiliate and have been satisfied. They fly the books, at least in the U.S. case, from Russian and mail them locally, which for me usually takes about 2 weeks. My only objection has been that they do not pack the materials very well–they wrap the order in butcher’s paper, with no box, and put it in the mail. At least they don’t bind w/ string! And the store in Britain may do better than that. If you are after audiobooks, however, the selection is no longer very good.
. . . Oops, you’re interested in ebooks. Well, setbook.eu list slightly more than 1000 in the Электронные книги section. www.ozon.ru lists plenty of e-books for sale, as do most other Russian booksellers on the Internet. I’ve never ordered any, so I can’t say how well this works.
For French . . . there are pirate sites that come and go, but I haven’t seen much from merchants. amazon.fr has a few, and quite a few audiobooks on CD, which is fairly new for them. If you are interested in audio, there is a paying download site similar to www.audio.com called . . . www.audible.fr . And there looks to probably be something here: http://www.leguide.com/livres_audio.htm . But like you, mostly I live in the 19th century.
