Quote:
Originally Posted by ATDrake
The limitation of formats vs stores is that some stores are automatically geo-restricted. Clued-in people know that Sony at present doesn't serve anyone outside the US/Canada (and in the future, the UK) unless they lie about their address.
Also, Christian Book has online reading and occasional non-DRM ePubs, so in order to best represent the books, one would have to check the individual listings, which could get tedious. (Not to mention the name provides a content warning for those who want to auto-skip religious stuff).
And then there's places like All Romance, where there's a bunch of formats that readers can pick from, but only one at a time.
Not to mention people may specifically want a version which autodownloads/syncs with their reader, from the store said reader may be attached to, and it would be nice to let them know that X is finally also available at Sony/Kobo.
A store-added update to the thread title provides exactly that info without their having to check back to see if that comment someone made was about a new store, or just unreadably bad formatting.
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Personally, I do check the listing - for just reason stated. saying "christianbook" doesn't tell me if the book works on Kindle (nor if it is available worldwide - both items are in the details). Their books are mostly christian oriented, but they do carry other Zondervan and Bethany House titles which are completely secular (cookbooks, for example).
Saying "Sony" or "Kobo" doesn't automatically tell me much either, as both have geo restrictions that are quite onerous to get around.
Knowing it is an EPUB with DRM, though, is useful, as is "DRM-Free" or "No Geo".
As for Kobo - I only use them for the EPUB. If you let their readers or apps sync, they try to download every single book in your library, even if they won't fit into the memory available. And some Kobo books are not EPUB (or, at least, not useable ones), which is also nice to know and easy to overlook when buying (I think we've all been bitten, here).
For Allromance and Ellora's Cave, a format isn't really necessary (they are mostly DRM-free, although they do have some ADE books), unless you want to note the ones that are drm-free PDF only, as some won't try to read or convert those.
For those that want to know
exactly which store, it isn't onerous to just read the thread. It's not as though there is enough room to keep putting every store in the title, any more than their is to note every single geographic restriction.