Quote:
Originally Posted by Tarana
Tales of Old Earth By Michael Swanwick $1.99 Amazon, Kobo and B&N
Scifi. 19 short stories, many are Hugo winners or nominees
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Oh, good. I've been wanting to explore his work, and this looks like an excellent place to start. I didn't even know this ebook existed. --But hold on! "Edition unavailable in your country. This edition of this title can’t be bought in your region. Click to see if another is available for you to purchase. [*Click*] Sorry! Your search did not return any results."
Okay, let's try somewhere else. "Not available for sale." Well, third time's the charm, right? "Sorry, this product is not available in your region." Fourth time? "This item is only available to U.S. billing addresses."
*Grumble*.
Other retailers, including my usual haunts, don't even tell you that much; they just can't find anything that matches the ISBN or other identifying number. No wonder I didn't know the ebook existed. A search for title and author on this region's site of a globally well-known webshop yields only one result, a used paperback available from third-party sellers for about $45 (+ $5 shipping) or $115, though the one offering it for $115 wouldn't deliver it to my address even if I were fool enough to want him to.
This is one thing about ebooks that I find aggravating. You can buy a printed copy of a book (as far as such a thing exists) and they'll ship it practically anywhere on earth (some third-party sellers excepted), but when it comes to ebooks, the World Wide Web shrivels to the Provincial Wide Web. Now, a plain Schmo who's not in the trade might assume that the publisher, the retailer, and especially the author would like to sell as many copies of the ebook as possible, no matter where or to whom, but that probably just demonstrates the poor benighted Schmo's lack of industry savvy.
I don't expect that special deals in one region will necessarily be offered in others, but I do expect that the ebook will at least be available for purchase (which it
almost always is), even if at a different price.
I gather that there are ways to circumvent these geographical restrictions, but I'm not very adventurous, and I don't want to have to jump through hoops to do business with somebody. So I suppose I'll just do what I've done in the past when encountering this issue: I'll do without.