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Where Are the Books in French for Kindle?

August 9th, 2010

A fran­cophile friend is eagerly try­ing to buy French books and peri­od­i­cals for her new Kin­dle DX. She splits her time between Seat­tle and France, and would love to con­sol­i­date her read­ing mate­ri­als elec­tron­i­cally for prac­ti­cal rea­sons. Fueled by opti­mism, she bought a third gen­er­a­tion Kin­dle last Friday.

She loves Kindle’s promise, but dis­en­chant­ment is already set­ting in… For rea­sons that aren’t clear, the usage sce­nario she has in mind is not well sup­ported by the cur­rent mar­ket envi­ron­ment. She has spent hours search­ing www.amazon.fr, to no avail. No French books to speak of, and hardly any periodicals.

Her trial sub­scrip­tion to Le Monde has revealed a num­ber of usabil­ity issues. There’s no teaser for­mat that enables her to skip to the arti­cles that most inter­est her. No images, text only.

Update: March 14, 2012 — Ama­zon has launched the French Kin­dle Store (at last!), and now offers over 4000 French clas­sics at no charge. You can visit Ama­zon for more infor­ma­tion on what’s avail­able for French speak­ers. It will be inter­est­ing to see how long it takes the French pub­lish­ing indus­try to agree to release cur­rent titles for enjoy­ment on a Kin­dle… Here’s a sum­mary of the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion.

And now, back to my friend’s wish list — for the expe­ri­ence she wants on a Kindle…

En Français, S’il Vous Plait

Her dream: read French nov­els, news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines on a con­ve­niently portable device like the Kin­dle. Cur­rent releases, not just 19th cen­tury pub­lic domain books. Because she’s pas­sion­ate about per­fect­ing her French com­pre­hen­sion and pro­nun­ci­a­tion skills, she’d love to read while lis­ten­ing to a simul­ta­ne­ous play­back via MP3 (or equivalent).

French is not her native lan­guage, so she wants to be able to select unfa­mil­iar words on the Kin­dle, thereby launch­ing a built-in dic­tio­nary whose entries explain their mean­ing. She’d also wel­come the option of view­ing French-to-English trans­la­tions of unknown words and slang (a must-have for peo­ple whose French is less flu­ent than hers.)

She’s very inter­ested in Kindle’s text-to-speech option, espe­cially if it doesn’t sound like a robot. Need­less to say, she expects the text-to-speech option for French con­tent to pro­duce words pro­nounced cor­rectly in French, rather than lis­ten to a techno-voice try­ing to pro­nounce French words as if they had been writ­ten in English.

Before order­ing the Kin­dle, my friend did some research which revealed that Ama­zon had released a dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing plat­form for French lan­guage authors in Jan­u­ary. That sparked her pur­chase of a Kin­dle. Surely, she thought, there’d be French ebooks in the mar­ket­place by now, 6+ months since Ama­zon released its multi-language pub­lish­ing platform.

Hélas! She’s learned there are few con­tem­po­rary books in French for Kin­dle. And no linked dic­tio­nary for French con­tent as there is for Eng­lish lan­guage content.

Too Early, Or Too Unusual?

Her big ques­tion: is she just suf­fer­ing early adopter pains, and if she waits patiently, will some­day have the oppor­tu­nity to read French books and mag­a­zines on a Kin­dle? Or is she an out­lier, a mem­ber of a niche mar­ket of French read­ers who would wel­come elec­tronic books, but who are too few in num­ber to moti­vate the French pub­lish­ing indus­try to embrace the new dig­i­tal formats?

And what about the French government’s con­tin­u­ing quest to pro­mul­gate the French lan­guage around the world? Will France suc­ceed in ensur­ing a steady demand for French lan­guage pub­li­ca­tions beyond French bor­ders? And if so, surely dig­i­tal for­mats would make French pub­li­ca­tions more eas­ily acces­si­ble to a broader global audi­ence if book­sellers could avoid the brick-and-mortar chal­lenges of inven­tory fore­cast­ing, ship­ping costs and other import-related challenges.

Update

The Wall Street Jour­nal describes the role of the French gov­ern­ment in pro­tect­ing the rights of small inde­pen­dent book­sellers, and spec­u­lates on what’s in store for elec­tronic books (Sep­tem­ber 24, 2010 arti­cle). Will the same law that pro­tects small book­sellers against heavy dis­count­ing also apply to elec­tronic books?

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16 Comments so far ↓

  • Scott Fivelson // Mar 1, 2011 at 9:16 am

    Dear Chris­tine,

    I am an Amer­i­can author, play­wright, and screen­writer liv­ing in Los Angeles.

    My com­edy novel, “Tuxes,” a satire of the clas­sic multi-generational rich-family saga, was pub­lished in 2007 in the U.S. by Beach­Side Press. It’s gar­nered excel­lent reviews, includ­ing com­par­isons to such writ­ers as Jonathan Swift, William Dean How­ells, and Kurt Vonnegut.

    In Jan­u­ary of this year, Poly­mancer Press, a divi­sion of Poly­mancer Stu­dios, Inc., of Mon­treal, Que­bec, Canada, pub­lished “Tuxes (French Edi­tion),” that being my novel “Tuxes” in a French translation.

    “Tuxes (French Edi­tion)” is avail­able from the Kin­dle Store at Ama­zon and at Amazon.co.uk.

    It’s also avail­able from iTunes in the U.S., Britain, Aus­tralia, Ger­many, and of course, France.

    I’m send­ing this infor­ma­tion, as I recently read the series of post­ings by you and oth­ers desir­ing to read con­tem­po­rary French lit­er­a­ture in eBook form.

    I hope my Amer­i­can novel, now avail­able in its French eBook form, will appeal to you and the oth­ers who’ve dis­cussed this topic recently.

    And that you’ll feel inspired to share news of “Tuxes (French Edi­tion)” with your read­ers and friends.

    Very best regards,

    Scott Fivel­son
    Author
    “Tuxes” and “Tuxes (French Edi­tion)“
    Los Ange­les, California

  • bill // Jan 9, 2011 at 12:23 pm

    I came across your blog while mulling over the ques­tion of get­ting an e-reader for use on a trip to France. The sec­tion on your friend’s desire for an e-reader that can dis­play nov­els and other mate­r­ial in French, with a hyper­linked dic­tio­nary of words and phrases in that lan­guage, spoke to me. It’s exactly what I want. I’m not a Kin­dle fan (or any other ereader), but I’d buy one just for that func­tion­al­ity. I’ll keep look­ing, and per­haps some day she, I, and the oth­ers will find a bet­ter solu­tion than the cobbled-together one which cur­rently exists.

  • Emue // Nov 14, 2010 at 3:22 am

    Hello,

    Sev­eral French inde­pen­dant pub­lish­ers are now on Kin­dle. If you type ‘Edi­tions Mue’, ‘Ded­i­cace’, or ‘Numerik­Livres’, you will find their books on Kindle.

    I myself have just released my first book on Kin­dle, it is a com­pi­la­tion of con­tem­po­rary short sto­ries, ‘Femmes con­tre nature’. You can find it here:
    http://www.amazon.com/Femmes-contre-nature-French-Edition/dp/B0048ELNIC

  • Benoit // Nov 11, 2010 at 2:14 pm

    I have the solu­tion but it may be ille­gal in the coun­try of res­i­dence.
    Any­way, you can go and buy ebooks on the web­site fnac.fr
    its ebooks are in the for­mat epub with adobe DRM. Google how to remove DRM from adobe epub.
    Down­load Cal­iber, a won­der­ful open source soft­ware. Cal­iber will con­vert from epub to Kin­dle for­mat.
    Job done,
    Bonne lecture.

  • Dan // Nov 11, 2010 at 12:46 pm

    I’m on the same boat.
    I’m french (from Québec) and been want­ing a Kin­dle ever since the first USA-only came out years ago. Been research­ing other e-readers too, but it’s been the same prob­lem ever since then : english-only books.
    In Québec one store is now sell­ing ebooks in french (Archam­bault) to go with the Sony eReader they are sell­ing… but the offer is still lim­ited (it’s slow to get the publisher’s mov­ing) and I don’t find it worth it, as for most pub­lish­ers the price is ridicu­lously high.

    It IS the publisher’s fault.
    Altough I under­stand their relunc­tancy, they don’t seem to under­stand that it’s their loss in the end.
    I won’t buy the eReader or Kin­dle to buy ebooks at the same price I pay for a hard copy (seri­ously, 25$!), but more often than not, I won’t buy the hard copy either, I’ll just go to the library.
    If Kin­dle had french ebooks, I would buy the Kin­dle and I would buy the ebooks. They may not get as much money per ebook as they get per hard copy, but they would sell much more in the end.

    With the new iBook store with Apple, I started using my iPhone to buy ebooks and I kinda gave up and started buy­ing orig­i­nal eng­lish books instead of french trans­la­tions. I just hope Apple is more con­vinc­ing and we get orig­i­nal french ebooks soon.

    • Christine // Nov 11, 2010 at 3:58 pm

      There was a good arti­cle in the Wall Street Jour­nal or New York Times a cou­ple of months ago that did a “deep dive” into the eco­nom­ics of pub­lish­ing, includ­ing roy­al­ties paid to authors. Because author roy­al­ties are cal­cu­lated as a per­cent­age of the book’s price, it seems that lit­tle money (in absolute dol­lars or loonies) goes to the author for sales of books on Kin­dle, Sony’s Reader, etc.

      It’s clear that there are mul­ti­ple issues con­spir­ing to slow down the avail­abil­ity of books for non-mass-market audi­ences… Which is a real shame for French speak­ers and readers…

  • VanZant // Oct 18, 2010 at 6:43 pm

    Good to know there are numer­ous oth­ers want­ing to read French on Kin­dle. I have been wait­ing for sev­eral years to no avail. In the mean­time, I will not buy a Kin­dle until able to read cur­rent French fic­tional books on one. All the eRead­ers seem to be English-centric.

  • mitch // Oct 3, 2010 at 2:58 am

    I guess I’m not alone try­ing to get french ebooks. has any­body tried buy­ing ebooks from fnnac.com? What about the Sony ereader? I want to be able to get both eng­lish et des bouquins en fran­cais. Please help

  • Lynjon // Sep 28, 2010 at 1:59 pm

    I think Benoit is cor­rect. My under­stand­ing is that Ama­zon do intend to roll out Kin­dle in France in due course but it is held up by the prob­lem of get­ting con­tem­po­rary books out of the pub­lish­ers. In the mean­time if you are con­tent to stick with the French clas­sics these are avail­able in the Kin­dle store. And you can get a French-English dic­tio­nary that can be used as the default dic­tio­nary whe read­ing French books.

  • Benoit // Sep 14, 2010 at 1:09 pm

    Hi all,
    The prob­lem is not Ama­zon but the French pub­lish­ers.
    I’m afraid that they aren’t on the same (kin­dle) page as the Eng­lish ones.
    And also, Ama­zon bought a French com­pany named mobipocket sev­eral years ago. I don’t think they want to sink their com­pany after get­ting their tech­nol­ogy. The mobipocket that are not encrypted can be read directly on the Kin­dle. It may be a way to work around.
    I’m sure, one day, it will be on but for now, it’s still not released.
    Keep check­ing amazon.fr and amazon.ca (The Québec)
    For the time being, I think only clas­si­cal are avail­able on the Kin­dle. (www.gutenberg.org, manybooks.net)

  • rogers walker // Sep 10, 2010 at 1:46 pm

    I agree com­pletely. This can’t be a niche mar­ket. With all the world French speakers/learners there must be rea­son­able demand. The tech­nol­ogy is there and it is greatly frus­trat­ing to me that they can’t fig­ure this one out. Another exam­ple of the the big guys (Ama­zon, Mac,etc…) set­ting the agenda to the detri­ment of World culture.

    • Christine // Sep 10, 2010 at 1:53 pm

      I hope that Ama­zon is lis­ten­ing, and plans to muster the tal­ent and busi­ness rela­tion­ships that will enable them to bring French lan­guage books, peri­od­i­cals, dic­tio­nar­ies, etc., to cur­rent and future Kindles!

  • barry proctor // Sep 5, 2010 at 7:31 pm

    yes I agree with the above, I bought kin­dle on the under­stand­ing that I would be able to buy e.books in the french lan­guage, but it hasn’t been pos­si­ble so far, I hope this is going to change.

  • Where Are the Books in French for Kindle? // Aug 9, 2010 at 7:34 pm

    […] See the rest here: Where Are the Books in French for Kindle? […]

    • Paul // Aug 26, 2010 at 6:22 pm

      I have been won­der­ing and research­ing the same thing to absolutely no avail. I just want to read French books and look up words in the built in dic­tio­nary. French peo­ple must want to do the same.
      Why is this impossible?

      • Christine // Aug 27, 2010 at 6:20 am

        I have a friend who’s also very inter­ested in this question.

        So we explored the infor­ma­tion that Ama­zon pro­vides to pub­lish­ers inter­ested in Kin­dle. Based on what I read there, I’d ven­ture to guess that their cur­rent mon­e­ti­za­tion and payment/taxation prac­tices dis­cour­age Euro­pean pub­lish­ers from par­tic­i­pat­ing in this plat­form. Pay­ments are in dol­lars to a US bank, and US income taxes are withheld…