hi,

Just picked up a brand new reader and discovered the fact that I cant actually buy anything for it as i'm non-us..

I've managed to get $50 credit to my account but don't seem to be able to even spend that as it want's a credit card on file even though i'm using credit..

So my question has to be.. have any UK users managed to buy anything yet? If so would anyone mind sharing how they did it?

Thanks,
Sam

Sadly I can't buy anything for my two Readers. manybooks and gutenberg are good for classics

"Leaping Gnome" on this forum very kindly offers to buy Connect Gift Vouchers for people not in the US - send him a private message and he'll arrange it for you; you pay him by PayPal. These can be used without having to have a credit card registered with Connect.

You should be able to use the $50 credit - just say "yes" when it asks you if you're in the USA.

There are many other sources of books other than "Connect", of course. Eg, if you're into SF or Fantasy, Baen published e-books at sensible prices in open formats. Project Gutenberg have all the "classics" available free of charge.

Hi,
I'm from Germany, but I had no problems to use the 50 $ gift voucher. I don't exactly remember, what I did, but somewhere in the forum you can find what to do. Maybe it's just that you follow the tip harry gives above.
Friedhelm

I really don't get why Sony blocks people from outside the US. You could buy these books on amazon, why can't you buy them as e-books in this case ?
I guess it's some kind of deal between Sony and the publishers, but I hope we won't end with e-books regions, just like DVDs and videogames.

Most likely not, because there are rumours that they are going to sell the reader in the UK this summer (which probably means selling in all countries in EU), so most likely they are going to obtain all the neccessary legal copy rights to sell the books. IMHO it is the only reason why they don't sell it here. They are negotiating with some entity about selling ebooks outside the USA.

I'm pretty confident that it is a distribution rights issue (i.e. they don't have them outside the U.S.) that is keeping them from selling books outside the U.S., and since access to buy the books more or less comes with the Reader, they have to hold off. They've got a pretty big 'due diligence' obligation, what with Sony being as big a lawsuit target as they are. :shrug:

Hi!

Sony's policy of not selling books outside the US is quite strange. You can buy ebooks from fictionwise, mobipocket or ereader from anywhere.

Given that publishers target is selling books (the more the better) I suppose that Sony's restriction is self imposed, for some reason.

I can only remember one ebook where I found some restriction. A couple of years ago I tried to buy "The Da Vinci Code" in ereader.com. The web replied that, due to restrictions from the publisher, this ebook could only be sold to customers from US and Canada. The system checked the personal profile stored in the system to allow the customer buying the book. So, I "moved" to Canada for ten minutes :happy2:

L.

Given that publishers target is selling books (the more the better) I suppose that Sony's restriction is self imposed, for some reason.


The reason is probably the fact that many publishers only have distribution rights for a book in a specific country. Many books, for example, are published by different publishers in the US and the UK. If Sony were to allow UK customers to buy books from the US publisher of a book for which a UK publisher had distribution rights in the UK, that UK publishers might well get a little annoyed!

I see the legal issues here, but these are issues that we don't have with paper books. Once again, it would be a real burden for e-books if they kept things this way...

If Sony were to allow UK customers to buy books from the US publisher of a book for which a UK publisher had distribution rights in the UK, that UK publishers might well get a little annoyed!

Agree.
Then again, I can order books from amazon.COM without any problem. What is different with ebooks?

Presumably, Amazon has distribution rights in the UK as well (the existence of the UK site suggests this). Though there may be books that you can't order from it in one country but not the other (good luck figuring out if that's so or not).

International distribution rights are a mess to try and trace, apparently. :shrug:

Agree.
Then again, I can order books from amazon.COM without any problem. What is different with ebooks?

That's true, but if you go to "amazon.com" you'll be offered, as a default, the US edition of a book; if you go to "amazon.co.uk" you'll be offered the UK edition. Try it with something like the "Harry Potter" books and you'll see what I mean. The situation with the Reader at present is that there is only the equivalent of the ".com" and no ".co.uk".

I'm sure it'll all be sorted out if, as strongly rumoured, the Reader is launched here in June.

UHm. If I go to amazon.com and buy an American edition of HP then UK publishers of HP should be very cross because they get nothing while American publisher gets all the money from me. What is so different with ebooks? I even can buy American editions on the local amazon.co.uk and again UK publishers don't get my money.
I think I am missing something.

Moreover, it works not only with amazon. There are plenty of online bookshops in the USA where I can order books. They do not have any branches in the UK at all.

They're probably also small enough operations not to attract litigative ire. :nice:

I've pushed probably about $4,000 in gift certificates to non-US mobileread members, if you have a paypal account and would like some Connect store credit just send me a PM. :)

I managed to buy a reader through ebay.com although it arrived set up in Japanese (!) to start with....

It was sorted out very quickly after I sent it back and very happy now.

Busy converting files to load onto it, there must be a way to automate this....

Busy converting files to load onto it, there must be a way to automate this....There probably, is. What are you converting from? :nice:

You might find the Wiki page (http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_conversion) on conversions to be helpful -- a lot of the conversion apps listed there do batch conversions, which speeds things up massively.

And of course, in case it needs to be said, RTF format works just dandy in the Reader (well, except for pictures), so if you can get a file there, you're pretty much done.