Quote:
Originally Posted by ficbot
But that's the problem: we, the end customer, have absolutely no idea who the Superwhooper Machine people or or how to contact them. The author does, even if it is only through an agent or third party. If you could reply to someone and say 'unfortunately, this is not my area but you can contact Joe Smith of XyZ Publishing, care of my agent, at this address' then I could understand. But 'shrug, oh well' is not really an acceptable reply to me.
I have written to authors, I have written to vendors, and I have said 'if you cannot fix this, can you tell me who can?' And no answer. It is unbelievably frustrating. Say, for example, you are a loyal customer who has bought every single book in a 30-book series and then book 31 comes out and is geo-restricted in your region. You have invested---time, money, brain cells, etc.---for 30 books so far. You are a sure sale. But yet...and then you write to the person whose name is on the book, and they say 'shrug, oh well' to you. Whether it is your *fault* or not, your name is on the book so you are that customer's face behind the curtain. If you are not the SuperWhooper person yourself, you at least are one level closer to them that that poor customer. And part of being that face, imho, is understanding that. And I think that as the internet brings people closer to those names on the book, this sort of thing is going to became more important and the people who won't, or can't give satisfactory answers will find their bottom line affected.
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The problem with geo-restrictions is just stupid. Why is an eBook treated differently then a pBook? Why can people buy a pBook from Amazon.com who say live outside the USA yet they cannot buy the same eBook from the same site? I'm sitting at the same computer in the same part of the world and I'm using the same IP address. Yet, I cannot buy an eBook say in the UK if I wanted to. But, I could probably buy a pBook and have it sent here. A lot of publishers are dumber then dirt when it comes to eBooks it seems.