Looking at the book provider list for German books on here, there’s basically only Amazon for contemporary books, plus Gutenberg and Zeno for classic works. Surely we can do better?
First of all, TIL that Goethe Institut has a digital library called Onleihe, where you can check out several books and audiobooks. Not sure if the collection differs per country (probably so), but in any case it’s worth checking out. I signed up at my local website, but was never asked for an address.
I was also looking at online bookstores like Thalia. I’m not yet sure if they sell ebooks outside of Germany - there’s nothing about it in the FAQ that I found. I’ll need to try and see.
Any other providers you are aware of, especially ones that will sell ebooks to different countries?
Austrian bookstore. They do take paypal (amongst various credit cards), so ebooks should be no problem from abroad.
Edit: RIP. You’ll need a VPN.
Bestellungen aus dem Ausland
Leider können wir eBooks seit Anfang 2015 aus steuerrechtlichen Gründen nur noch innerhalb von Österreich verkaufen. eBook-Bestellungen aus anderen Ländern können wir nicht ausführen.
Don’t know about ebooks, but they do physical delivery of books:
Thalia.de liefert Ware in folgende Länder:
Deutschland, Österreich, Frankreich, Luxemburg, Niederlande, Belgien, Schweden, Dänemark, Italien, Portugal, Spanien, Finnland, Irland
Bitte beachten Sie dabei, dass aufgrund von Zollbestimmungen und langen Versandwegen der Liefertermin nicht exakt vorhersehbar ist. Bei Fragen hierzu wenden Sie sich bitte an unseren Kundenservice.
Wir weisen darauf hin, dass bestimmte Sortimente wie z.B. eReader, aus logistischen Gründen nicht ins Ausland geliefert werden können.
single market with varying taxes. almost like the US but at least we list the taxes on the price tag.
(Germany has 7%, Austria 10% on books, iirc)
Edit: regarding providers: don’t forget libraries in general. Onleihe (that was mentioned in regards to Goethe Institut) is like Overdrive/Libby but focused on German material. Most german-speaking libraries have Onleihe as part of their services.
Edit 2: I also have found a surprising amount of stuff on Hoopla, which is a service a lot of US libraries offer.
Unser eBook-Angebot gilt derzeit nur für Kunden mit Wohnsitz in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz. Um eBooks bei uns bestellen zu können, benötigen Sie eine Rechnungsadresse in den jeweiligen Ländern.
They just want an address in Berlin. They don’t check. Paid with an Austrian CC, with an Austrian “Rechnungsadresse”. My name for the library card didn’t even match the name on my CC… so… yeah… they don’t check anything. I just recommend giving your true birthdate because that becomes your password.
what?! That’s a good deal. I joined my library (in Germany) to mainly access digital resources and the price recently doubled to 40 Euro a year! Aside from Onleihe the only other thing I use is filmfriend, which has some interesting Dokus. I took out the physical copy of Der Blechtrommel on loan despite my partner protesting that a) it’s depressing like most German classics and b) library books are gross. And on p 40-something was a big bloody smear and half the pages were falling out. I’ll have to be pickier for the next one but I have to admit now I also have an aversion to library books whereas before I quite enjoyed taking them out and not buying everything.
This drives me nuts about Germany. Everywhere else, my birth date can be used to access sensitive information, and here it becomes my password for so many things, or just casually on every single form I fill out. In the meantime, (inspired by UK’s royalty) I have a private and public birthday (April fool’s day) and it’s pretty easy to remember which one I give to whom.
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almost like the US but at least we list the taxes on the price tag. 
