If you bought it from an authorized dealer, it absolutely should have been. If you bought it gray-market, then no, it won't be in the box. And, actually, the presence of the book is a pretty telling sign as to whether you have a legit US product, or gray market.
If I could find a legitimate, secure way to offer an e-book that wouldn't be instantly pirated, I would be very interested in doing so. I've looked into this, and the industry seems a bit goofy right now -- you either get something that's completely unprotected, like an ePub, or you get something protectable but won't work on Macs, or other nincompoopery. And then the stores that sell e-books absolutely ream the seller to the point where it's not really all that worth it to sell through them. When I've looked into the Kindle, iBooks, and Amazon publishing stores, they offer ridiculous rates and take enormous fees and can even dictate to you what your selling price is.
Panasonic USA buys them off me, in bulk, and includes them as a gift to the consumer. They feel that they're of great value in helping the consumer understand and use their new camera to the best of their ability.
I am currently pursuing the viability of language translations.
I am certain that the other territories certainly care about their customers as much. Just recognize, please, that there are always inequalities when dealing with differing countries, usually in terms of price and exchange rates. We have a thread running right now where someone's pointing out that it's cheaper to fly from Australia to the USA, than it is to buy an Adobe product in Australia. And we frequently see people in Europe pointing out that it's cheaper to fly to New York, pick up a product at B&H, and fly back, than it would be to buy that product in their home country(!) Rules, regulations, taxes, import duties, sales office overhead, and currency exchange rates all conspire together to create inequality in the marketplace.
but as it is, sometimes someone takes a chance, sometimes someone tries something new, and Jan was that person in this case, and that's how we got into the situation we're in now, where all the AVCCAM and handheld P2 camcorders have books included with them.
Well if it was an authorized US unit, there would be a mail-in card to mail-in for the book. Gray Market product does not qualify for a free book.
The problem is it costs a tremendous amount of money to run even a small quantity of books off. It may end up being economically not viable to run a small run of books in a larger size; I may have to stick with the smaller size for this particular camera. I'm waiting on Holdan to tell me what they think would work best in their territories.