Amazon will be opening up their online bookstore and selling e-readers in the Netherlands this coming Wednesday. Over 20,000 eBooks will be available in Dutch and 2 million in English, giving readers a ton of content to be able to devour.
In the Netherlands Amazon will be competing primarily against BOL.COM, the largest online bookstore. 60% of all eBooks currently being sold are via this website and they have a larger library, that includes 30,000 titles. The primary advantage BOL has, is that they sell their content with Social DRM and Digital Watermarks, thereby making the EPUB files able to be loaded on any e-reader, tablet or smartphone.
Amazon will be fighting an uphill battle to get market share in the Netherlands and they are hoping cheap e-readers will pave the way. The Kindle Basic will be available for €59, Kindle Paperwhite, €109, and the new Kindle Voyage will cost €189.
Update: Amazon has just updated their Android Kindle App and iOS App for Dutch support.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
