How to purchase ebook.com books in the UK

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by dickon25

...which is the same reason that the BBC iPlayer service isn't available to British expats in Europe - a huge bone of contention in itself!

Do those people pay the BBC licence fee? If not, they surely have no right to access the material.

[jaffab]

As I said in my original post, ebooks.com only checked the copyright issue at the time of book selection (which I overcame by my quick re-enable of the order buttons). Once the books were in my shopping basket, it was fine with a UK email address, a UK postal address and a UK registered credit card.

One of the things everybody needs to be aware of in the UK is that on printed books, no Vat is paid. Whereas ebooks are regarded as electronic media and so VAT is payable (if purchased in the UK), which makes an ebook automatically 17.5% more expensive than the same book as from say the USA.

Now as Waterstones are pricing their ebooks in the same ball park as printed books (the latest biog from Richard Branson is the same price in both printed and ebook format (less £1 off the ebook for a promotion), it means that any saving that would have been made for saving in paper, printing costs, stocking costs, postage etc etc etc is wiped out by the increase in VAT.

Its a mad, mad situation here in the UK. We get charged more becuase, well becuase we are British and therefore can be charged more (its called Rip Off Britian), then we pay VAt on electronic books (possibly a tax on learning), and suffer the bad service of Waterstones.

[jaffab]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

Does this mean that the ebook retailer is assumed to be exporting the ebook? If I click on a download link this seems to be me as an individual importing the file. How about if my credit card is from (say) the UK, but I download from (say) FictionWise to a US server and then with a 2nd click download it to the UK? Is FictionWise still exporting to the UK?

Most of the sites that restrict sales seem to do it based on credit card address, not the actual "delivery" location.

In the case of ebooks.com (the site which I started this posting about), the only check is at the time of pressing the 'order book', and it is using the IP address of your connection to work out the geographical location, to disable the purchase button. There are no checks on the use of UK credit cards, or address, just at the time of pressing the order button.