As long expected, Amazon announced today the launch of their first non-English Kindle store, debuting in Germany with "over 25,000 German-language titles," including "71 of 100 Spiegel bestsellers" and "thousands of German classics downloadable for free." The store appers to have lots of English-language titles for German customers as well, since the company says the store has over 650,000 titles in total.
When the German Publishers and Booksellers Association launched their own ebookstore last November through Libreka.de, they also began with approximately 25,000 German-language ebooks for sale (which is still the count displayed on the site).
Amazon says their title counts also include "thousands of independently-published German-language titles through Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing service," which obviously is now available in Germany as well. The so-called "70% royalty option," which has previously applied only to ebooks sold in the US, UK and Canada, is now extended to Germany and Austria.
Seven of the top 10 bestselling titles this morning were priced at 13.99 Euros or greater, with the No. 1 title priced at 19.99 Euros, and no title in the top 20 costs less than 8.99 Euros. Many of the ebooks are priced between parity with print prices and 20 percent below those prices (though ebooks carry higher VAT).
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