New ebook store for Australia and New Zealand

[kevine]

Originally Posted by Solicitous

Actually I don't think it is a case of Economies of Scale (yes I have done economics). We are in a current situation where as a consumer we are not really restricted to local markets, we are living in a global market. Gone are the days of only being able to buy a book/cd/computer/whatever from the local guy, we can now buy nationally or internationally with the click of a button.

Where the high price comes from IMHO is local book publishers are just starting to get their feet wet, coupled with customs duties + gst etc.

I mostly agree, except I don't buy the international argument for Ebooks (yet) - except for the technically savvy. You need a US credit card and IP address for a lot of vendors, or other workarounds.

I'd say it is still national economies of scale at the core of the issue - maybe I should say economics of a large markets/sales versus small (I did not do much economics ). Kudos to DAdirect for investing what can't be an insubstantial sum to get readwithoutpaper up an running for what must be a tiny market - OZ ebook readers. They must be hoping to ride the wave of local adoption, and I hope they do.

I suspect local distributors/publishers are in fear of local adoption as they might eventually have to compete on a international level with multinationals like amazon with razor thin margins, and without the benefit of the shipping costs for real books as a barrier. Their comfy book distribution business can't be looking that comfy long term, at least in its present form. They will have to evolve, just like the music industry has. So you are right in that they are just getting their feet wet.

cheers

- Kevin

[Katti's Cat]

Originally Posted by Solicitous

... We are in a current situation where as a consumer we are not really restricted to local markets, we are living in a global market. ...

Hate to say this - but with the geographical restrictions on eBooks we are not as global as we want to be

[tech_au]

I have bought my first ebook there and as always there are some bargains and some non-bargains
I bought the Ben Elton collection(3 ebooks in one download) and it was cheaper than buying it from WHSmiths or Waterstones in the UK by a few dollars.

[Blue Tyson]

I had a brief look - some stuff didn't seem to bad - apart from the blah PDF only thing - there was one I would have got if not that.

A fair few audiobooks it seemed - 17.70 for Alastair Reynolds Galactic North seems cheap?

Paperback would be more expensive than that in Australia.


Not selling the text version though.

[tezza]

Just checked out the new store and bought some ebooks. (They have Doctor Who ebooks... I think that might be a world first!)

Was surprised when none of the books I purchased had proper covers... just frontpages listing the title, author and publisher. Strange, as I've used overseas ebook sellers in the past and never run into that issue. (I could insert the covers myself if not for the Adobe DRM!)

And it was frustrating to build up a big shopping cart and then not be able to proceed to the checkout because:

One or more of the titles in your shopping cart is/are not available for purchase due to publisher/author territorial restrictions. We apologize for this inconvenience.

There's no way of telling WHICH book/s cause the problem, short of deleting them one-by-one until the system lets you into the checkout. In my case, turned out it was a Star Trek book.

There are hundreds of Star Trek books on the site, all with $AUS prices, but it seems like none of them are actually available to us Aussies!

On the upside, it's a great-looking site and the search function is excellent. Much better than the site I was using previously, Books on Board (www.booksonboard.co.uk)... that is one UGLY estore!

[cbell]

tezza, geographical/territorial restrictions to Australians and New Zealanders on any of our ebooks is a mistake. Please contact the service email address with details of any problem ebooks, so we can investigate and fix them. The email address is at the Contact Us link at the bottom of the page www.readwithpaper.com.

I didn't realise we had Doctor Who ebooks. Guess that's some more titles I'll just have to buy myself!

[tezza]

Thanks cbell. I have emailed the Support person.

[mchidgey]

HI all,
Today I purchased two books from the new read without paper website, which launched yesterday. Unfortunately there seems to be a big glitch - I can't download my books!
All I get when I click download is a file called URLLink.acsm, which is clearly useless!
What a shame. I hope I get my money back!

[cbell]

mchidgey, an acsm link is correct. Please contact the support email for help with downloading your ebooks.

[Khelbiros]

Originally Posted by mchidgey

HI all,
Today I purchased two books from the new read without paper website, which launched yesterday. Unfortunately there seems to be a big glitch - I can't download my books!
All I get when I click download is a file called URLLink.acsm, which is clearly useless!
What a shame. I hope I get my money back!

Make sure you have Adobe Digital Editions on your computer and then click on the link. It downloads the book via ADE. I hope that the help section of the RWP is expanded as the site grows. I only discovered what the link did by clicking on it!

The actual book will be in a folder called 'Digital Editions', I think. Under Documents on a Mac.

I had trouble getting my ePub book on my Hanlin v5, but got it working:

I plugged the Hanlin into the Mac via USB cord and started Adobe Digital Editions. ADE recognised the device and I authorised it.

Within ADE, I tried to drag the ebook over to the Hanlin icon that appeared, but it froze. After restarting, I copied the file from the Digital Editions folder and dropped it on the Hanlin manually. I was able to read it after that.

[Khelbiros]

@cbell:

A help page like this one: http://www.booksonboard.com/index.php?F=help
for all the different reading widgets would help, especially if you're trying to cross-market the ereaders sold at DA Direct (especially your featured ECOreader) with Read Without Paper.

I didn't find your current help files very useful at all, I'm afraid. Pictures and screen grabs walkthroughs are good; I couldn't see any references to acsm links in your section at all.

[cbell]

Thanks, Khelbiros.

As you've seen, your device needs to be authorised in Adobe DE once, so DE can write a file to your device.

There's a link to a comprehensive help page at the top right of www.readwithoutpaper.com (Next to "My Account").

There's a link on our help page called: "Instead of the eBook I expected, I downloaded a file named 'urllink.acsm'. Where is the eBook?" with a lot of information.

Our site is a work in progress and your comments are very much appreciated

[tezza]

Originally Posted by tezza

Thanks cbell. I have emailed the Support person.

And it was frustrating to build up a big shopping cart and then not be able to proceed to the checkout because:

One or more of the titles in your shopping cart is/are not available for purchase due to publisher/author territorial restrictions. We apologize for this inconvenience.

My bad! Apparently not all publishers include book covers with their ebooks. So it's not a Read Without Paper problem.

(Publishers... why not include the cover! C'mon!)

The support people say that they're fixing the incorrect "territory" restrictions... looking forward to it as there are some ebooks I'm itching to purchase.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by tezza

My bad! Apparently not all publishers include book covers with their ebooks. So it's not a Read Without Paper problem.

(Publishers... why not include the cover! C'mon!)

The support people say that they're fixing the incorrect "territory" restrictions... looking forward to it as there are some ebooks I'm itching to purchase.

Most often the cover has images on a separate copyright. It may be that they weren't able to get a release or would have had to increase the price of the eBook.

Dale

[Solicitous]

So those of you who have purchased ebooks from readwithoutpaper, how do they look? Anyone have problems on the Hanlin line of ereaders? I'm not too concerned with epub files, I'm more curious how purchased PDFs look.

Edit: I guess with PDFs I'm concerned if they are formatted like the Suvudu freebies, those PDFs don't work well on my reader.