[KevinH]

I am beginning to think that geographic restrictions make no sense when applied to e-books. They obviously do not apply for print books. I have never been turned down buying a book in stock at any book store in any airport or country in which I have visited.

So here is my rant about current e-book stores and publishers ...

I recently found Steven Erikson's work (fantasy - but not children's) and started to read his main series. I liked them. I was able to find books 1 and 2 via Amazon (in Kindle format).

I live in Canada (and so for that matter does the author Steven Erikson!). Unfortunately trying to buy his third book in any e-book format in Canada is next to impossible.

Amazon has Kindle format e-books of all his books available for US residents but only books 1 and 2 to Canadians (up until the most recent).

So I tried EReader and Barnes and Noble - no luck

I next tried Stanza - Fictionwise and again no luck.

Our big book chain in Canada is Indigo/Chapters. They point you to the Kobos site for e-books, and again no luck there at all. If you ask them in the store about e-books they look like you are crazy.

I tried the Sony Online bookstore and again a few of his works but not the one I was looking for.

I tried manybooks.net. I tried every damn ebook store that I could find. But living in Canada has made it next to impossible.

No luck.

Finally went to Waterstone's in the UK and was able to buy the book (a bit more expensive given the price in Pounds) but ...

Have e-book stores missed the whole point?!?

Why are they not "stocking" the entire series from an author when the marginal cost of carrying that "additional inventory" is 0?

Why are they not creating e-book versions of the previously popular (high selling) but out-of-print works?

Why limit anything based on where your internet connection or credit-card is based? No print book-store does it?

Why are they charging more than the current paperback prices for the books that are out in paperback or even older than that?

Why are they pricing books in Canada based on out-of-date exchange rates just because it is printed on the cover of the printed book?

I want to buy e-books and the bookstores and the publishers are going out of their way to make it difficult!!!!!!!!!

There is a huge market opportunity for the first good international e-book store that understands this and makes it easy to find books, buy books, etc without all of the stupidity in the current system - sad really.

End of rant