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The company put Kindle on sale in the UK just last week, though ebook enthusiasts can only buy the device and books to read on it from Amazon’s US store. And Amazon will charge $13.99 to download each title, a hefty hike on the $9.99 it asks of US customers.

It seems that the extra charge is to cover the cost of allowing Kindle users to download books via the device’s mobile internet

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connection. Failure to reach an agreement with any of the UK network providers means that the Kindle will ship with a US SIM card, so book purchases will have to cover the cost of mobile roaming.

Amazon said that it has to charge the higher price to cover VAT and the “higher operating costs outside of the US”, which sounds like euphemism for the data charges.

But Matt Bath, technology editor for consumer magazine Which?, said the $4 difference is “gobsmacking”.

“It's not like it costs any import taxes. It will be interesting to hear if this is anything other than a stealth tax."

And as Bath says, there are other, cheaper ways to get ebooks, often in the open Epub format which, unlike Kindle’s proprietary format, does not tie books to a single device.

Kindle starts shipping to the UK on 19 October.