e-book vendor that is a little less strict about regional limits (buying from Europe)

[ametzler]

Hello,

I am searching for an e-book vendor that acts a little more sane / is less strict about regional limits than the big ones. I am located in Austria which usually is in the same boat as Germany licensewise.

Recently I have been hitting the license wall when trying to buy e-books via Amazon et al. rather more often than previously. e.g. would you believe that none of big vendors I looked at are selling e-book versions of Philip Pullman's Dark Materials trilogy?

Diesel ebooks used to work well, but it has now been gone for quite some time.

Thanks in advance, cu Andreas

[DiapDealer]

I don't think you'll find any legitimate vendors who will knowingly ignore/flaunt geographic restrictions to sell you ebooks that they have no right to sell you. Geo-restrictions are not something imposed by the retailers/vendors and have nothing to do with their sanity or their "strictness." I'm sure they'd love to sell you a copy if they were allowed. It's the rights-holders—not the vendors—who authorize/contract for the various distribution rights in other countries.

Representatives of the authors, or the publishers they've signed their rights over to, are the ones acting "insanely."

Perhaps I've misunderstood, though, and you're looking for vendors who make it easy for you to fool them into thinking you're in a geographic region they're allowed to sell to?

[meeera]

It's trivial to change your country with Kobo. and there don't appear to be limits at the moment on how many times you can do this in a given tine period. They also don't insist on a matching IP.

[Apache]

I have a Amazon UK account that I have been using for years. It was easy to set up.
Apache

[Hrafn]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I don't think you'll find any legitimate vendors who will knowingly ignore/flaunt geographic restrictions to sell you ebooks that they have no right to sell you. Geo-restrictions are not something imposed by the retailers/vendors and have nothing to do with their sanity or their "strictness." I'm sure they'd love to sell you a copy if they were allowed. It's the rights-holders—not the vendors—who authorize/contract for the various distribution rights in other countries.

Are you sure about that? My impression was that many (most?) geo-restrictions were due to overly-conservative readings of dead-tree era (and often pre-internet) licensing terms, terms that quite simply don't cover the modern environment, so therefore neither explicitly forbid, nor explicitly permit, direct sales to customers who are outside the retailer's immediate geographic area.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Hrafn

Are you sure about that? My impression was that many (most?) geo-restrictions were due to overly-conservative readings of dead-tree era (and often pre-internet) licensing terms, terms that quite simply don't cover the modern environment, so therefore neither explicitly forbid, nor explicitly permit, direct sales to customers who are outside the retailer's immediate geographic area.

Not anymore.
That ended back in 2009.
http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/ficti...moting-piracy/

By now it is written into all the contracts that what matters for ebooks is the location of the buyer, not the seller.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Hrafn

Are you sure about that? My impression was that many (most?) geo-restrictions were due to overly-conservative readings of dead-tree era (and often pre-internet) licensing terms, terms that quite simply don't cover the modern environment, so therefore neither explicitly forbid, nor explicitly permit, direct sales to customers who are outside the retailer's immediate geographic area.

Of course I'm not entirely sure. But due to the fact that retailers don't make money by NOT selling things their customers desire, I suspect there's more to it than overly-conservative interpretations of licensing terms. The fact that Amazon and others make the effort to stay on the right side of these agreements suggests to me that their legal teams consider them to have enough teeth left to warrant caution.

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Not anymore.
That ended back in 2009.
http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/ficti...moting-piracy/

By now it is written into all the contracts that what matters for ebooks is the location of the buyer, not the seller.

Actually, it's the location of the buyer, as determined by their billing address, that matters, not their physical location. I'm particularly affected by this because my finances are split over two countries, so my ability to buy things is dependent on which card I use.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

Actually, it's the location of the buyer, as determined by their billing address, that matters, not their physical location. I'm particularly affected by this because my finances are split over two countries, so my ability to buy things is dependent on which card I use.

That's the baseline.
But Nook and Google (among others) have been known to restrict downloading by IP location, regardless of where you bought it. So downloading while on travel can be hit or miss with some vendors.

[GeoffR]

You might consider writing to the publisher and asking them if they can make the books you want available in your country. This has worked for me on a few occasions, especially with US publishers.

I think if the publisher is not sure about their rights to sell in a small market like New Zealand they figure it is not worth the effort to check when the book might not even sell one copy, or US publishers might assume that a UK publisher would have exclusive rights for New Zealand. But it seems an email from someone wanting to buy the book can be enough to get them to check, and when they do check sometimes they find they do have the rights after all.

Edit: The same can work for self-published books that are exclusive to Amazon: Write to the author and ask if they can make them available at another retailer, sometimes they will temporarily while there is no promotion on at Amazon that requires the book to be exclusive.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

Edit: The same can work for self-published books that are exclusive to Amazon: Write to the author and ask if they can make them available at another retailer, sometimes they will temporarily while there is no promotion on at Amazon that requires the book to be exclusive.

Indie titles at Amazon don't usually have georestrictions and a majority are DRM-free. Not all but a lot. It's a way to deal with the exclusivity.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Indie titles at Amazon don't usually have georestrictions and a majority are DRM-free. Not all but a lot. It's a way to deal with the exclusivity.

That is wonderful news if it is true. Can you back that up? (Majority means over 50%.)

[darryl]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

That is wonderful news if it is true. Can you back that up? (Majority means over 50%.)

I doubt that can be backed-up easily. Actually, I think that Amazon leaves things very much in the hands of its authors. I do remember that Hugh Howey published one of his Wool universe books wiht Amazon, then sold some of the rights including the Australian rights, to one of the BWM publishers. That book suddently became unavailable in Australia. So obviously some Indie titles do have geographical restrictions applied. But I doubt it makes any sense in the case of most Indie authors publishing with Amazon.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by darryl

So obviously some Indie titles do have geographical restrictions applied. But I doubt it makes any sense in the case of most Indie authors publishing with Amazon.

Right. No reason to restrict them, and cut out part of your revenue stream, when you own the worldwide rights.


One self-pub situation that comes up is authors who are self publishing backlist titles where the rights have reverted in certain regions. Those are geo-restricted if the rights are still held in certain other regions.

[Hrafn]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Not anymore.
That ended back in 2009.
http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/ficti...moting-piracy/

By now it is written into all the contracts that what matters for ebooks is the location of the buyer, not the seller.

The problem is that your conclusion (which may or may not be true) is not supported by that link -- which has little, if anything, concrete to say about contract terms and conditions.