Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemurion
Essentially it has to do with rights issues.
The gist of the matter is that for most English language books the North American and European rights are sold separately. Any e-bookstore naturally gets the books from the rightsholder in the country where that bookstore is located.
In other words you can't necessarily get the same book in the US and Timbuktu - The US publisher probably doesn't have the rights to distribute that book in Timbuktu.
Many of them sell worldwide based (as far as I know) on the principle that the transaction takes place in the country where the store is located; much like a European visitor in the US buying a book in Borders. They can still take it home even if the US publisher doesn't have European rights to the book.
This is fine for pure e-book stores, but not for someone like Sony.
If they sell hardware in Germany, they need to make sure they have the rights for that territory for any book (or any book bought with a credit or coupon) bundled with the reader. That means they either set up a store for each country or partner with a local store to make sure they have the right editions. Essentially the reader being a physical object puts them into that country as far as rights are concerned.
It doesn't matter for books bought from stores like Fictionwise, but with Sony's own DRM being tied to the device it certainly does matter for Connect.
That's why Sony Canada allows access to the Connect store and Sony UK uses Waterstones: different rights. (Though it gets messy with Canada because some books have North American rights and others have Commonwealth rights- so sometimes Canadians get the US editions and other times they get the UK editions.)
Making deals in all those countries takes time.
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Thanks for your analysis. Whilst no doubt accurate, Sony has had literally years to negotiate the "rights" in other regions, and doesn't seem to have made attempts or progress. But that doesn't really answer the limitation on buying the device (from Sony) from anywhere in the world. The device can't be the problem as just about any gadget is available worldwide (e.g. iPods, X-Boxes, etc.).
No doubt as long as there is some local distributor, publisher or reseller earning local profit, and the governement gets a share of some kind of tax, then all will be happy. These things do take time, but I don't believe they would take this long in most "western" countries if the companies were serious. The limited markets they have are obviously enough at this time.
In the end the whole situation is ultimately farcical, as I can just go and start an account at
www.myus.com (not that I've done this) and for a (very) small fee they will forward mail (
sans dangerous goods, porn, etc.) to just about anywhere in the world. In addition, if you need a US credit card to purchase you can simply pay them and they use one of their cards to make your purchase.
Where there's a will there's a way...