Amazon Spain Online Shop Now Open

In September 2011, internet shopping giant Amazon finally opened the doors of Amazon Spain. This becomes the 9th country-specific Amazon shop.

The others are the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Austria and Japan.

Initially, Amazon Spain will offer a range of books in the Spanish, Catalan, Basque and Galician languages, all at a minimum of 5% discount with free shipping on orders over €19 ($26).

They also start with a basic range of home appliances, electric and electronic goods, DVDs and computer software, all at really competitive prices.

The range of products sold by Amazon Spain will be added to, bit by bit, until they are as well-stocked as the other Amazon online stores.

What they do NOT have yet, but which they hope to have in place by the end of the year, is digital downloads which will include Kindles and electronic books.

With the launch of the new Kindle Fire, Amazon Spain will be ready to start distribution as soon as it becomes available in Europe.

As well as having books in 4 of Spain's dozens of languages, books are also available in English at up to 30% discount. As a native English speaker, it seems odd to me to see books in English listed under 'Foreign Language Department'!

This is a brilliant move for English-speaking expats who have moved to Spain as books in English are very hard to find in Spanish bookshops, unless it is in the second-hand market.

Up until now, Brits in Spain have been able to order books from Amazon UK, but Amazon Spain is better if your bank account is Spanish, so there is no exchange rate to work out.

The prices for books on Amazon Spain are very reasonable. For example, the hard back version of George R,R, Martin's A Dance with Dragons is:

• £12.50 (€16.38) from AmazonUK
• €9.36 on AmazonES

Or, Heat Rises by Richard Castle (hard back)

• £14.26 (€18.68) from AmazonUK
• €14.14 from AmazonES

Postage as I said above, is free if you spend more than €19 in the one order.

Amazon Premium is on offer where, for an annual fee of €14.95 ($20.50), you can have free delivery no matter how large or small your order, with their super-fast delivery service.

Amazon Premium is similar to Amazon Prime but without the live streaming video that is offerd in the US and possibly in the UK too. The charges are as follows:

• US $79
• France $67
• Germany $39.80
• Italy $13.70
• UK $75

I have converted all their prices into dollars for comparison purposes, rather than using the local currencies which makes confusing reading if you are not a currency expert with a built-in calculator in your head. (Hey that would be handy! Wonder if Amazon sells one of them?)

If you live in Spain and want to use Amazon ES, use the Google Chrome browser, which can be downloaded directly frm the Google Chrome download page.

When you open a page in a foreign language, there is no nore guessing what the language is, because a banner opens up along the top of your page telling you what language you are looking at, and asking if you want it translated.

You can choose YES, and another option will ask you ALWAYS TRANSLATE? Choose YES if you never want to read pages in a foreign language (important for students to note), and then everytime you open a foreign language page it will be automatically translated, although the banner is always there if you want to change back to the original language the page was in.

This Is a GREAT feature to use with Amazon Spain.

I do apologise - those screen shots are hard to see, but you will see some parts of the text have not translated - the part to the right of screen where it talks about the Kindle - it just says go to Amazon.com to buy the Kindle, as it is not yet available on Amazon ES.