Here is what I think about all of this:
Tom hasn't changed any rules, just made a small cosmetic change to the template. I remember dreams already adding in details on location availability if someone mentioned them in previous months. A book can still in theory be nominated and win even if it's not available in most places if that's what most people vote for.
I like the thought of being as inclusive as possible and of course I don't want anyone to feel left out because of their region.
However, there are a few reasons why this doesn't work well in practice. There are members in many different regions and ebook availability is notoriously spotty even now. We have members from at the least the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia, Italy, I think I've seen at least one person from a Scandinavian country and another from a smaller Asian country, and many others when you include those I might've missed and members who vote but post infrequently and the ever-evolving membership. In fact, I just now after writing that decided to check a few and looked at some locations of voters in the December thread; I checked less than twenty random ones and was actually surprised at the diversity: besides those already mentioned, I found
two from Germany, and ones from Switzerland, Spain and India.
If we try to find books available in all those countries, we'll have an extremely limited amount to choose from, mostly only books in the public domain everywhere.
Also, I find that so far, the checking and mentioning of availability of specific countries has been and probably will continue to be erratic. I think those who post about a book not being available in their country often just check ones they are most interested in, and then comment if it's not available.
Which would be fine, except for the fact that I think others not from that region tend to feel bad and then proceed not to nominate or vote for that book. It's not a rule and sometimes people vote for a book regardless but I've noticed that many books that someone complains about an availability problem suddenly loses steam completely.
The problem is in the erraticism of it all though. Random books are just singled out. For instance, I went to the November thread and used Amazon to check the U.S., Canada, U.K. and Australian availability. Guess what?
FIVE of our ten nominees weren't available in at least one of those countries. That's HALF of our nominees, including both that tied for first place. Yet there may have been other nominees discounted beforehand because someone complained it isn't available in their region, but that person never checked on the books that did make it in that aren't available in their region.
Also, just to broaden our perspective, I chose to look at one other country and randomly picked India since it's a large country with a large English speaking population and we have at least one member from there, and it was easy to specify on Amazon. Guess what? TWO more books then become unavailable, leaving only three of the original ten nominees available in the five countries I checked (and that's not including the other countries our members come from).
One final thought as well - besides ebooks and paper library books, there is also the possibility of buying the paper book outright. Using this method, almost any book is available almost anywhere, at least the ones we would be nominating here. And usually for not too much either, compared to an ebook version. I know shipping can definitely be a factor for some countries, but it's still an option. For instance, Black Rain on ebay in the U.S. is only $7.05 at the moment with free U.S. shipping (I know that most of you who will need the paper book are in other countries but this was in direct response to Nyssa's post mentioning over $40 in library membership fees to get it where she lives).
Again, personally I want everyone to feel included and welcomed and I wish more ebooks were more consistently internationally available, but I don't like the erratic nature of certain books singled out as not being available in certain areas that derail their nominations when many other nominations aren't available in certain areas as well that never get pointed out. And to limit us to only books available everywhere would severely limit us.
So my personal thinking is that Tom's addition of various countries' ebook sites is fine and can be a help to certain members (though if he's adding for those countries he should consider adding some for other countries represented in our membership), but the idea of noting by a nomination where it's not available if pointed out seems (and has always seemed) erratic and unnecessary to me, unless we are going to check every nomination for the same availability, and even then, since others will often feel bad and not vote for a book not available somewhere, we will end up severely limiting our options.
Thank you for reading what is possibly my longest post ever.
