I was looking for some books (revivals of old out of print books) on Kindle, and I found them on Amazon UK and Amazon Australia, but not Amazon US. The UK site says " Kindle titles are available for US customers on Amazon.com. Continue shopping on the Kindle Store at Amazon.com." The Aus. site says the same thing.
Is there any legal way around this? The author was British, but I don’t know why the Kindle books would be restricted and not available in the US.
Maybe the author is from the UK and published the Kindle edition without global distribution rights? That way they’d just be sold in the UK. I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t order them from a UK site, but that’s something I haven’t tried.
The author is long deceased (1957 I think) and copyright has probably run out. It seems likely that the conversion of the book to Kindle/electronic format may have a copyright or some other ownership status, but I don’t understand why they wouldn’t have done so in a way to include the US.
I’m far from an expert on this and I’m sure someone more knowledgeable will come along, but I’m not saying that copyright is the issue, it’s the distribution agreement. I can’t explain in any more detail than that 
eta: I have published Kindle books (on behalf of someone else) and you do explicitly choose whether you want to distribute globally or not. Why would someone choose not to? I have no idea.
Perhaps it is because of the old territorial rights in publishing - the English speaking world was split between USA, Canada and the Philippines and everywhere else. Everywhere else belongs to British publishers. In Australia you can only buy books from US publishers if no British publisher is publishing the book. Perhaps a US publisher has the rights to the books but they aren’t on Amazon?
Not necessarily. If it was first published in the UK during the author’s life, copyright is generally the author’s life plus 70 years, according to the British Library:
How long does copyright last?
In the UK copyright protection for published works can last up to 70 years after the author’s death. However, the duration of copyright differs depending on the type of work and whether it is published or unpublished. After copyright expires, the work is in the public domain.
So if the author died in 1957 and it was published in the UK during the author’s lifetime, it’s likely still under copyright until 2027.
Paging @Acsenray !
Hi! You have basically covered it.
Many countries have harmonised their copyright laws to a large degree and most countries have treaties with each other to respect each other’s copyrights.
However, is really no such thing as international copyright law. Each country has its own copyright law and that means that copyright licenses are signed on a country by country basis. For whatever reason, this particular work apparently isn’t available in the United States in E-book form. It could be for one of a dozen reasons—there’s no point in speculating.
Maybe Amazon just doesn’t want to pay the price for U.S. publication rights that the copyright holder is asking. Or maybe there’s some confusion over the U.S. rights. It’s impossible to know without researching this particular situation. And there’s no guarantee that you can find the right person to ask and that E will even care to respond to you.
But, as pointed out above, this work is probably still under copyright protection. By the way, if you are in the United States, then it’s the U.S. law that applies, not the U.K. law. It doesn’t matter that the author was British. But, if the references above are correct, then the two terms have been harmonised anyway.
What is the work in question?
If it really is in the public domain in your country, you may be able to download it for free and legally, if anyone has bothered to digitize it for one of the free e-text sites. I would suggest searching on the Online Books Page, which indexes e-texts available on other websites, such as Project Gutenberg.
Cornell library maintains a convenient guide to what is and is not in the public domain in the US. If the book you’re looking for was published in the UK in 1927 or earlier, it should be in the public domain in the US. Some works published after 1927 in the UK will also be in the public domain in the US.
If you find the book online in a suitable format, you can send it to your Kindle. See Amazon’s page on Send to Kindle
Thank you for the very helpful suggestions. There are several books published in the 20 years before the author’s death, the earliest was in 1937. They do not appear to be in the public domain in the US, as I could not find the author by name in the authors list. So no luck so far. There are paperbacks available for some of them, but I don’t want to be lumbered with paper copies (and they are a little expensive),
Not sure if this is what’s being asked, but I have a couple of Japanese Kindle books (created and published in Japan) that require a Japanese Amazon account and Kindle reader. I’ve converted the book to PDF, so I don’t have to use the reader.
Any of the works by Dorothy Bowers. I think there are seven, but I’m not positive.