If only I lived in the US.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by roger the rabbit

Having seen the glowing recommendations by Dr Drib and others in the 'what are you reading thread' for *The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo* I thought I would check it out.

Yes! you guessed it, I can't buy a copy of this ebook from anywhere.

Now where do I go from here Hmmmmmmmmm?
(suggestions by PM please )

If you can't find the solution, PM me for advice.

[wdreamsmaycome]

the thing I don't understand is:

- I have always been able to a pbook anywhere (Canada, US, UK, Germany, Italy, ...) and have it shipped to me (of course paying duties/shipping).

- I can NOT buy an ebook not available in my country (for the publisher's definition of 'available') no matter what.

why are ebooks treated differently? I would be totally ok with paying an extra 'customs/shipping/export' charge just the same way when I ordered books from the UK that hadn't been published here. Why is it that publishers do not want to give me that option for electronic goods?

Until this is resolved I will have to stay away from ebooks, which sucks because I'd love to have an ereader, but I will not buy a 'license valid only if/until I live in my current country' instead of a book.

And yeah, you authors are losing out just as much, because staying paper only means that I will use my library instead of actually buying books, because at this point in time I do not feel like buying a pbook is worth it either.

[Guns4Hire]

Originally Posted by lente

I don't know if this is the right place to vent my grievances with the way things are going with ebooks so feel free to throw this away or move it, trample it, spit on it, anything you like.

I'm a big fan of ebooks. I own a BeBook ereader for a while now and I have already enjoyed reading many books on it, but that has changed. Geographical restriction. I think most you can guess my problem from these two words. I can no longer buy the ebooks that I want, because I live in the Netherlands (yes, that's in Europe) and not in the US. I'm super pissed.

Oh I understand the reasons, but the reasons mean shit to me. I'm child of the internet age and I want my ebooks. I don't care if they come from the US, china or the moon. I used to just pirate them, yes I was a bad, bad boy, but I grew a conscience. This is costing me a lot of money, but it makes me feel better. Yet now that I am finally spending money on ebooks they begin to tighten their geographical restrictions. This isn't new, but it used to be that most books didn't have these restriction. The opposite is now true, I can no longer buy most ebooks.

Oh sure, I can still buy a lot of crappy title's. You know the cheap title's no one buys. Most ebook stores are now useless to me. The only exceptions are Bean's webscription (I love these guys, and you should too!) and Smashwords (I haven't used this one yet, but I've heard good things about it). I can no longer use my favourite ebooks stores - booksonboard, fictionwise and diesel-books -, because most of the good books from my favourite author's are now US, CA only. I know, they can't help it, it's those greedy publishers.

I can tell you I have been seriously tempted to go back to my wicked ways, but in the end I decided to remain on the path of righteousness. I will have to go back to buying paperbacks, because I don't think this will be sorted out any time soon. They will probable begin to sell more ebooks internationally, but at a higher price, just like amazon is doing now with their kindle machine and ebooks weren't that cheap to begin with. I will not pay more money for a ebook than I will for a paper version.

That's it, can think of anything else to complain about. If you have read this far: thank you for your time.

Befriend someone in the states. Get a paypal account. Send money via paypal. Have your new friend send you the ebook via email. Easy enough.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by Guns4Hire

Befriend someone in the states. Get a paypal account. Send money via paypal. Have your new friend send you the ebook via email. Easy enough.

Not that easy. Your friend would have to license the books. For example, he would have to use your Adobe Digital Editions account. At least this costs you one of your instances. And in the worst case there's always the trust issue.
It's way easier to solve. Usually, a VPN client will be all you need. Sometimes it's even enough, to use a (fantasy) US address and pay via your normal credit card.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by lente

I don't know if this is the right place to vent my grievances with the way things are going with ebooks so feel free to throw this away or move it, trample it, spit on it, anything you like.

I'm a big fan of ebooks. I own a BeBook ereader for a while now and I have already enjoyed reading many books on it, but that has changed. Geographical restriction. I think most you can guess my problem from these two words. I can no longer buy the ebooks that I want, because I live in the Netherlands (yes, that's in Europe) and not in the US. I'm super pissed.

Oh I understand the reasons, but the reasons mean shit to me. I'm child of the internet age and I want my ebooks. I don't care if they come from the US, china or the moon. I used to just pirate them, yes I was a bad, bad boy, but I grew a conscience. This is costing me a lot of money, but it makes me feel better. Yet now that I am finally spending money on ebooks they begin to tighten their geographical restrictions. This isn't new, but it used to be that most books didn't have these restriction. The opposite is now true, I can no longer buy most ebooks.

Oh sure, I can still buy a lot of crappy title's. You know the cheap title's no one buys. Most ebook stores are now useless to me. The only exceptions are Bean's webscription (I love these guys, and you should too!) and Smashwords (I haven't used this one yet, but I've heard good things about it). I can no longer use my favourite ebooks stores - booksonboard, fictionwise and diesel-books -, because most of the good books from my favourite author's are now US, CA only. I know, they can't help it, it's those greedy publishers.

I can tell you I have been seriously tempted to go back to my wicked ways, but in the end I decided to remain on the path of righteousness. I will have to go back to buying paperbacks, because I don't think this will be sorted out any time soon. They will probable begin to sell more ebooks internationally, but at a higher price, just like amazon is doing now with their kindle machine and ebooks weren't that cheap to begin with. I will not pay more money for a ebook than I will for a paper version.

That's it, can think of anything else to complain about. If you have read this far: thank you for your time.

There are workarounds for almost all webshops. VPN clients, fantasy US addresses, ...
Tell us the shop of your interest and we can give you a hint to the respective workaround.
Very often I've got the feeling, those workarounds and backdoors are there by purpose. For example, gift cards for iTunes USA. Would be very easy to block IPs on AppleTV. But it doesn't happen. Maybe Apple isn't that pissed about purchases from outside the US (which actually are more than 60% of gift card revenues)?

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by Guns4Hire

Befriend someone in the states. Get a paypal account. Send money via paypal. Have your new friend send you the ebook via email. Easy enough.

Couple of issues regarding this method that I found last night;

1. Need to attach an account or card to the Paypal account (which is country of location based, in the main) to use auto checkout feature. Do the ebook stores check account origins or the Paypal mail address?

2. Which US address do you use (ignoring the fact it might be considered identity theft...)?

Finally, the book will have DRM attached to it that will need to be removed before use. A helpful soul would need to have your PID etc to be able to allow the DRM to be removed (in the case of Mobipocket at least)

If anyone can solve or shed more light on solving these issues?

As I said earlier, my morality meter is beeping but can be turned down considerably if a workable Paypal solution enabling me to buy books that I want is presented.

[HansTWN]

Search the Kindle forum, most related information can be found there.

[Guns4Hire]

Originally Posted by sabredog

Couple of issues regarding this method that I found last night;

1. Need to attach an account or card to the Paypal account (which is country of location based, in the main) to use auto checkout feature. Do the ebook stores check account origins or the Paypal mail address?

2. Which US address do you use (ignoring the fact it might be considered identity theft...)?

Finally, the book will have DRM attached to it that will need to be removed before use. A helpful soul would need to have your PID etc to be able to allow the DRM to be removed (in the case of Mobipocket at least)

If anyone can solve or shed more light on solving these issues?

As I said earlier, my morality meter is beeping but can be turned down considerably if a workable Paypal solution enabling me to buy books that I want is presented.

Not sure what you are saying. Are you saying Paypal doesn't work internationally. I am not saying it does I just assumed it did. If it did you could (like I said) create a Paypal account. Befriend someone in the US that has a Paypal account. Send the money to your new US friend. He buys the eBook (in whatever manner) and then emails you the eBook.

Then you strip it and load it etc, or he strips it. Doesn't really matter.

Obviously this only works if Paypal works internationally which I thought it did, actually I am sure it does.

I am not saying you should create a Paypal account and put a US address. Put your international address and then have your US friend take care of the rest.

[sabredog]

That is another take on the issue, yes. I cannot buy a GR crippled ebook via my Paypal account as it is an international one, not a US based one. So the check is country of origin of the Paypal account I guess.

Getting a friend to pick up the book for you is a good idea as a last resort though.

[Pardoz]

Originally Posted by sabredog

2. Which US address do you use (ignoring the fact it might be considered identity theft...)?

Borderlinx will set you up with a real US mailing address for free (they only charge you to actually forward stuff to your real address).

If the store is using the billing address of your credit card to define your geographical location, you need to find a work-around for that too - gift certificates usually work, since they aren't geo-restricted. This can get somewhat awkward since you usually need two accounts for this (one with your real info to buy gift certificates, one with your US location to buy from). If you plan to disinfect the DRM on the book once you buy it, this is less of a problem, of course.

[Pardoz]

Originally Posted by wdreamsmaycome

why are ebooks treated differently?

Because they can, essentially.

Why is it that publishers do not want to give me that option for electronic goods?

Control is more important than income or satisfied customers.

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by Pardoz

Borderlinx will set you up with a real US mailing address for free (they only charge you to actually forward stuff to your real address).

If the store is using the billing address of your credit card to define your geographical location, you need to find a work-around for that too - gift certificates usually work, since they aren't geo-restricted. This can get somewhat awkward since you usually need two accounts for this (one with your real info to buy gift certificates, one with your US location to buy from). If you plan to disinfect the DRM on the book once you buy it, this is less of a problem, of course.

Very interesting and worth a look at, thanks.

I would plan on disinfection once the ebook was sitting in my hard drive.

[lente]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

There are workarounds for almost all webshops. VPN clients, fantasy US addresses, ...
Tell us the shop of your interest and we can give you a hint to the respective workaround.
Very often I've got the feeling, those workarounds and backdoors are there by purpose. For example, gift cards for iTunes USA. Would be very easy to block IPs on AppleTV. But it doesn't happen. Maybe Apple isn't that pissed about purchases from outside the US (which actually are more than 60% of gift card revenues)?

I thank you for your offer to help, but the workarounds don't feel good to me. It's potentially illegal and might be easily discovered. What if that happens, someone already said it, would issue's of identity theft be involved and what else might I be charged with?

No, if I'm going to do something illegal than I might as well go to a newsgroup or a torrent site. At least then I know that it is unlikely I will be caught, besides I don't have to worry about drm either. I could just buy the paperback version of the book to silence my conscious. I'm not saying that this is what I will do, I would much rather have a way to buy the book I want legally for a reasonable price.

[sabredog]

Gift certificates do not work either. The system still needs to complete a transaction thus looking at country of origin

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

There are workarounds for almost all webshops. VPN clients, fantasy US addresses, ...
Tell us the shop of your interest and we can give you a hint to the respective workaround.
Very often I've got the feeling, those workarounds and backdoors are there by purpose. For example, gift cards for iTunes USA. Would be very easy to block IPs on AppleTV. But it doesn't happen. Maybe Apple isn't that pissed about purchases from outside the US (which actually are more than 60% of gift card revenues)?

Love to know how to work around geo restrictions at Diesel. I have exhausted everything to to find a solution to that issue.