Kindle Geographic Restrictions On US Website - Against US Buyers

[toholio]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

Live Bait is published in the US by Signet (a Penguin US label) they DO NOT offer it as an ebook.

Live Bait is published in the UK by Penguin UK they DO offer it as an ebook.


There are geo restrictions for US customers on other sites selling books from UK publishers too.

I just registered to say essentially the same thing but you've got it well covered.

Now that the Kindle store is officially usable in multiple countries we're going to see more of this. Digital music downloads suffered, and still do suffer, the same problem.

It'll get better after a while but lots of publishers will hold out longer than makes sense. They'll do it while complaining about piracy without providing a viable alternative for people who want digital editions.

I'll be surprised if ten years from now we wont be able to print the timeline of stupid mistakes the book publishers are making and match it up with the timeline of stupid mistakes the music labels made before them. Everyone is too busy trying to "save" their current market that they aren't preparing for their future market.

Ok, enough ranting for now. Welcome to the land of being messed about by geographical restrictions. The places you can pirate media from instead of dealing with the whole mess are over there...

[Alisa]

I'm hoping that big players entering the international market will make publishers realize that they need to sort out digital rights from the start and have a plan for ebook launches. Ebooks are not going away no matter how much they resist. If they don't offer the book in a way that's easy to get and at a reasonable price, people will just go download it off the darknets. Technology is making it easier to rip books all the time. Some money is better than no money.

[BuddyBoy]

Ah yes, welcome to what the rest of the word has been dealing with for umpteen frickin' years. My heart bleeds for you.

[krischik]

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

One wonders what Amazon's rationale for this is? Anger customers enough to demand their availability in the US? Combine all Kindle listings in one global database that is visible on all Amazon sites - where buyers will have to sift through the "change region" option to find out if they can buy the book?

Now you know we (non US inhabitants) felled all the time. Apart from that: nothing new, Mobipocket always worked that way - one big catalogue and all the disappointment when you can't actually buy the book.

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

To further confuse customers, the last book in the Monkeewrench series IS available in the US, but not the previous ones.

And go ahead try to by the hole Dune series while not living in the US. I started a Thread on the Dune forums but nothing of substance came out of it. The only interesting part - but not surprising - part was that the authors are not aware of the situation.

Originally Posted by Olympus

Can anybody explain to me how an author / copyright holder can agree in this totally connected world such a totally confusing situation.

By not knowing what the situation is.

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

It's totally perverse - as if (in the midst of an economic downturn/crisis/what have you) - publishers don't want our money - or are trying to make it as hard as possible to buy their product!

Actually it is not their product. It is the Authors product. Authors could choose publishers like smashwords or beam-ebook which don't restrict at all. Problem is that most Authors choose a pBook publisher first and get eBooks as a perceived bonus.

Martin

[cbennett009]

http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/h...1012-gu3w.html

I guess it gets worse. When I'm using my kindle in Australia I will be able to get access to buy one sent of books but when I travel back to the UK I'll get access to a different set again. I wonder if the same will be true of any US magazines or newspapers that I decide to purchase.

I wonder if this will extend to Amazon deleting books I shouldn't have depending on the country I'm in!

[DawnFalcon]

Actually, I don't think that's the case. When you first use the Kindle it sets a "base" location, to which your avaliable books will be fixed.

[Crowl]

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

One wonders what Amazon's rationale for this is? Anger customers enough to demand their availability in the US?

While its probably just an oversight on their part, here's hoping that this is the actual result and that maybe the problem can get some more attention from the people that matter, the authors.

[nelsonescorcio]

Geographical restrictions are, for sure, perverse.

However, they were already preverse BEFORE US restrictions. The rest of the world has felt this pain for years.

It is ALSO perverse to only be in shock now, when US readers are affected. Nothing has changed, really.
Everyone here in particular should have seen and understand that.

[pieter]

sssssh, just be good citizen/consumers and don't whine about ebooks costing the same or more as paper books, or about DRM ignoring your rights, or about Amazon being able to delete books off your kindle whenever they feel like it, OR... about publishers enforcing whatever arbitrary geographical boundaries they feel like on an electronic format...

Why you guys keep paying these people is beyond me... Though I guess most people don't care about these things unless they directly affect them...

[EowynCarter]

Originally Posted by nelsonescorcio

Geographical restrictions are, for sure, perverse.

However, they were already preverse BEFORE US restrictions. The rest of the world has felt this pain for years.

It is ALSO perverse to only be in shock now, when US readers are affected. Nothing has changed, really.
Everyone here in particular should have seen and understand that.

Yeap

Though what curently anoys me is :

We currently do not show a Kindle, iPhone, or iPod touch registered to your Amazon account.

I guess books sent to iPod touch can't be sent back to pc right ? Or can the touch be Jailbreaked in order to do that ?

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

I guess books sent to iPod touch can't be sent back to pc right ? Or can the touch be Jailbreaked in order to do that ?

No jailbreak neccesary

[EowynCarter]

really ? I though that apple being apple... So i would be able to get the books from the iTouch, unDRM them, ePub, and voila, opus-readable file.

I must be crazy, i'm now considering buying an iTouch

[Direct Ebooks]

I'd agree that geographic restrictions are crazy, but we have to understand that there will be a transitionary period between traditional and "modern" publishing.
It is much more profitable currently for authors and their agents to sell their right to the highest bidder in each territory rather than to one publisher for worldwide rights. It is then up to the individual publisahers as to whether they make the books available in eBook formats.
This may not change anytime soon as the industry is so used to this model. What we may have though, is savvy authors selling the digital rights to their books to an internet based publiaher or retaining them for non-exclusive distribution themselves.

All this will take time, but we the readers can play an important part by posting on sites like this about what we want. Believe it or not, the powers that be do occassionally listen!

[opitzs]

Well, it is not as if publishers did this to be mean. They have a license to distribute a book in a specific geographic area, and they have to enforce that. With audio books it is the same...

It's just, that this system should be updatet for ebooks as fast as possible, although for the life of me I can't see anyone who will want to be first there, as the geographic licensees will want to be compensated for their losses.

[Crowl]

Originally Posted by Direct Ebooks

It is much more profitable currently for authors and their agents to sell their right to the highest bidder in each territory rather than to one publisher for worldwide rights. It is then up to the individual publisahers as to whether they make the books available in eBook formats.
This may not change anytime soon as the industry is so used to this model. What we may have though, is savvy authors selling the digital rights to their books to an internet based publiaher or retaining them for non-exclusive distribution themselves.

Another option would be for authors to require ebooks to be published as part of any deal they sign, at least it would ensure people could get to read the books they wanted even if they may not get the best pricing.