B&N vs. Borders on my Nook

[mwdowns]

I found out this weekend that it's easier to get books onto my Nook using Borders rather than B&N. I live in Japan, and for some reason or another B&N will only let you buy books from their website if you are physically located in the US, whereas Borders lets you buy ebooks from anywhere.

What kind of ridiculous policy is it that B&N won't allow purchases on their website from outside the US? I'm using a US credit card and the billing address is in the US. I can kind of understand why I can't shop using my Nook and wireless, but not being able to use my computer to buy stuff from B&N....really? Really?

Any folks here work for B&N and can explain to me why it is you don't want to take my money?

[iandix]

if you bothered to read many of the post on this site on this subject, you would know it's not B&N it's the publishers that will not allow books to be sold outside the US. There are many posts on this site also explaining how to get around that and have full access to the B&N store.

[mwdowns]

What makes it so difficult for B&N as opposed to Borders or Amazon or any of the myriad other online eBook retailers?

[geertm]

Originally Posted by mwdowns

I found out this weekend that it's easier to get books onto my Nook using Borders rather than B&N. I live in Japan, and for some reason or another B&N will only let you buy books from their website if you are physically located in the US, whereas Borders lets you buy ebooks from anywhere.

What kind of ridiculous policy is it that B&N won't allow purchases on their website from outside the US? I'm using a US credit card and the billing address is in the US. I can kind of understand why I can't shop using my Nook and wireless, but not being able to use my computer to buy stuff from B&N....really? Really?

Any folks here work for B&N and can explain to me why it is you don't want to take my money?

US publishers do not allow e-bookstores to sell their books outside the US. They (especially the agency 5 publishers) have forced all bookstores to implement very strict geo-restrictions. This is true for all US bookstores, except Amazon. Amazon is the only US e-bookstore that is allowed to sell books outside the US. I have no idea how they ever got the publishers to agree to this. No other bookstore has succeeded it getting this permission.
I am sure B&N would like to sell their e-books outside the US, but the publishers do not allow this.

Borders has no e-bookstore of its own They are using the Kobo bookstore. Kobo is a Canadian bookstore. There is no agency model in Canada yet. And it seems like Canadian publishers are not forcing bookstores to implement very strict geo-restrictions (for now). Kobo seems to be the only bookstore where Europeans can buy e-books without lying about there location, or having to use an VPN.

[iandix]

You don not have assess to the full catalogue of books with both of them as well. They have been working on deals and Amazon even open a store in the UK to try to get around these restrictions. B&N have stated that they are also working on that area as well, and last year even were advertising for staff in that area.

Amazon, Baen and Borders are just about the only ones who have international sales at the moment. B&N are more interested in cementing there position in the US first. B&N does not hide this fact they state on their website. Again this has been discussed to death on this site. Blame the publishers who are making difficult for B&N

[mwdowns]

Fictionwise is also OK, though a bit expensive.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Sony just started reselling their ereaders in Japan in December and opened a Japanese ebookstore. The news articles said it opened with about 20,000 titles, mostly Japanese books. You might want to research their bookstore as an option for you.

As a side note, Sony also has US and Canadian ebookstores. Booksonboard has both US and UK ebookstores.

[Poppaea]

Set up a borderlinx address and use Sonys bookstore

[Lemurion]

It all depends on how they enforce georestrictions: Amazon enforces them by CC address, B&N by IP and CC address.

[deadse]

Couldn't you just use hotspot shield and paypal to get round that? Should be a fairly trival workaround.

[drv]

Does anyone know if Google Books allows sales outside the US?

[jbcohen]

Poppea - borderlinx? You know something I don't please enlighten me.

[rdfry]

Originally Posted by mwdowns

What makes it so difficult for B&N as opposed to Borders or Amazon or any of the myriad other online eBook retailers?

It is difficult because the retailers have to have agreements with all the publishers in every country that they want to sell to. This a long involved process and B&N has only had a presence in the US and is relatively new in the online market place.

[geertm]

Originally Posted by mwdowns

What makes it so difficult for B&N as opposed to Borders or Amazon or any of the myriad other online eBook retailers?

There are no myriad of other Ebook retailers selling e-books outside the US

There is only 1 US e-book store that somehow was able to get permission from the publishers to sell e-books outside the US, and that is Amazon.
All other US bookstores have been forced by the publishers to implement strict geo-restrictions, and are not allowed to sell their books outside the US.

Borders/Kobo is the only other exception. Borders is using the Kobo bookstore. Kobo is a Canadian company, and it seems that at the moment Canadian publishers have not (yet) forced bookstores to implement geo-restrictions.

This is not just a US problem. In the UK Waterstones and WH Smith used to sell their books outside the UK. When last year the agency model was introduced in the UK, the agency publishers forced Waterstones and WH Smith to stop selling their books outside the UK.
And Amazon UK also just sells books to the UK. Everyone outside the UK (even in Europe) has to buy their books from amazon US.

In the UK their have already been complaints by UK publishers that Amazon US makes it to easy to buy their books outside the US, and they want Amazon to implement stricter geo-restrictions.