Comments on: Ebook retailer makes it harder to buy ebooks from outside US

By: Martin Taylor

Martin Taylor — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 11:32:56 +0000

@toliman If Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc can sell any title from the US without restriction, this will make it unlikely that smaller markets will be able to develop local retail channels which can feature locally-relevant books or authors, or can encourage local promotion of books and authors. I don’t think that’s a good way to support our literary industry and authors.

Who’s going to incur the cost of promoting a new book or author in New Zealand, for instance, if the sale goes to a different company in the US – you need a way to connect the sale to the promoter who bears the cost of that sale (often, but not necessarily) the same publisher who is promoting the p-book edition at considerable expense).

Territorial restrictions don’t stop consumers buying ebooks, they just allow local channels to develop that support local publishing and allow local marketing to exist. And since it’s under the control of the publisher/author, it doesn’t remove any options from them, it opens them up. If a publisher wants to sell their titles without any territorial restrictions, they can (and do).

By: Toliman

Toliman — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 11:02:32 +0000

“In the past, under independent ownership, it seems to have had fairly loose territorial restrictions on its customers. I know you’ve been able to buy titles from Fictionwise fairly easily from New Zealand, for example.”

how, exactly, do you rationalise this as a good thing ?

where in New Zealand, would you go to download an eBook ? do they have a local distributor in that country ? do they have a distributor in Australia, Asia, Europe,, etc, that would also not have territorial restrictions, and sell the book to that customer ?

why is this a good thing ? it certainly makes piracy a better alternative, since a retail outlet refusing to sell a product, makes more sense, than an e-retail outlet refusing to send a file because it doesn’t want to sell the product to a customer.

i can understand regional protection for local markets, Australia / NZ has a tiny retail market which would instantly be flooded by almost any import/export of AUS/US/EU printed retail books, but what about the instance where there is no competing market, when the local distributor has no eBook version, has no plans to operate in the eBook market, and yet, local publishers and local distributors have no ability to modify that geographic embargo for consumers, when they won’t be competing in that market.

what, precisely, makes this ‘probably right ‘ ?

By: Aida

Aida — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:07:32 +0000

This is awful!! I’m from Spain, a regular buyer of ebooks, and for lots of books I prefer de original version in english, than the spanish translation, plus I don’t want to wait 3 years until the book arrives here. So for me, ebooks were the perfect solution. So now I’ll have to wait aproximately 1 month until the book is on emule and I can download it for free, so they hay certainly lost a buyer.

By: Chas. Kearney

Chas. Kearney — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 19:07:12 +0000

Contemplating the purchase of an E-Book Reader I checked out prices at various sites, and was appalled to find that whilst you can buy the print copy of an older book for a few pounds + delivery, they wanted the full retail price for an E-Book. How is that for short sighted! The book sellers of this world can’t see green cheese but they want a big chunk of it, and if they continue in this manner they’ll stop E-Books in their tracks, kill the golden goose and cost authors a fortune. Madness!

By: Howard T

Howard T — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 10:44:27 +0000

Have the same problem,.Apparently it os tied to your credit card details. If you have a UK account or know somebody that has this will solve your problems.
Currently it is driving me up the wall!!

By: Janice R

Janice R — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 01:19:42 +0000

I agree with comments above. As somebody who lives in Asia and does a lot of travelling in the course of my job, it’s impossible to lug around hard-copy books when my suitcase is already overloaded with training gear. So this lack of availability of ebooks is a real pain in the leisure-time, which I have too little of anyway when I’m training in some obscure spot. I’m stuck doing the same as Richard: re-re-read the books already on my e-shelf. But I’m getting awfully sick of some of them….!

By: Richard Clement

Richard Clement — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 05:47:52 +0000

What a shame this is. Since about 2000 I have been a regular purchaser or eBooks from eReader.com – Peanut Press as it was then. I started on an early Philips PDA and have been through Ipaq’s, Palm’s, Symbian Nokia’s and finally the iPhone. Over this period I have built up a library of hundreds of titles – often at prices not much cheaper than the print book. As a voracious reader I just loved the convenience of buying books from home and always having something to read with me. Last year I bought an e-ink reader BeBook which saw me switch some of my business to Mobipocket – but it seems both now have extensive geographic restrictions. If other countries had ebookstores in place I can see the point – but all that this does is cut off sales within a fledgling industry. Its plain barmy – and Im not switching back to paper – Im just rereading my existing content. I have a simple system – all novels are bought as e versions which keeps the space free on the shelf for nice hardback non-fiction!

By: Barnes and Noble claims world’s largest eBookstore, announces Plastic Logic deal

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 08:49:07 +0000

[...] its purchase of Fictionwise and its eReader software earlier this year, US bookselling giant Barnes and Noble has launched some early fruits of this acquisition with what [...]

By: sarah catherall

sarah catherall — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 02:32:01 +0000

Hi
I was trying to get hold of Shelley who left a comment above. I’m writing a feature article on ebooks and keen to interview her as she’s a buyer. Please email me with your details if keen. Thanks so much.
Sarah Catherall

By: Donald D. Jones

Donald D. Jones — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 09:48:33 +0000

The problem is that digital publishing is still being driven by the print publishing industry. It is, in fact, a completely different industry, with its’ own paradigm.

Our author’s contracts are not set up for regional rights, but for language rights. Usually, we contract for all English and Spanish language rights. In some cases, we contract for English and the author’s native language. Digital books are inherently marketed internationally on the internet, so the geographic rights that made sense in print publishing are absolute insanity in the digital publishing industry.

As more pure digital publishers start rising up through the ranks, you can expect geographical restrictions to disappear.