How are geographic restrictions affecting you?

[GeoffC]

that's the spirit !

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by lene1949

I no longer worry about the books I CAN'T buy, but concentrate on the books I CAN buy.

The negative was just an added stressor I didn't need, and there really are a lot of good books available to me. I have a huge TBR list, so maybe the geo-restrictions are doing me a favour...

Which is why I have only bought one book since april.

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by lene1949

I no longer worry about the books I CAN'T buy, but concentrate on the books I CAN buy.

The negative was just an added stressor I didn't need, and there really are a lot of good books available to me. I have a huge TBR list, so maybe the geo-restrictions are doing me a favour...

Yes, I agree. There's already too much sneaking and tinkering involved with e-book reading because of DRM. Yes, I don't have to buy DRMed ebooks but if I don't I might as well through away my reader, and I don't want to do that. So I put up with DRM, but evading georestrictions is an added headache I don't need.

Even when I eliminate the books I can't buy and the books I won't buy because of the price, there are still many good books available to me. It's a shame that there has to be a selection like this, but this has always been the case after all. When I bought books in bookshops, I was restricted by the selection of the bookshops I went to. There have even been a few paper books (not many) that I wanted to read but was unable to find.

All in all I think the number of books available to me, in English and in the near future in French, has increased to the point of making me dizzy

[GeoffC]

the books make you dizzy ! - so that's the inspiration for your excellent artwork !!!!

[FlorenceArt]

LOL, I am dizzy all the time anyway. Right now I am dizzy because it's almost lunchtime, and also because those multifocal contact lenses don't work all that well. But maybe the correct word would be "fuzzy" in that case

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

LOL, I am dizzy all the time anyway. Right now I am dizzy because it's almost lunchtime, and also because those multifocal contact lenses don't work all that well. But maybe the correct word would be "fuzzy" in that case

multifocal contact lenses ! didn't know such existed .... !

[bevdeforges]

Originally Posted by ficbot

I wonder if a concerted effort to target the author's agents would help.

The only problem is that it's not "simply" a problem of distribution rights. There's also the whole tax issue. I suspect the reason some vendors won't sell to "foreigners" is simply because they don't want to have to bother with the sales tax/VAT issue.

In Europe, at least, this is complicated by the fact that the EU considered e-books to be, not books, but "information services" or some such designation which allows them to collect full VAT rate. In most countries, p-books get some reduced rate of VAT, or sometimes VAT exemption. But the vendors are supposed to charge the rate of VAT in the country to which they are sending the book.

I just checked a few invoices from Amazon, and yes, Amazon.co.uk does indeed charge me VAT at French rates on my purchases (books, or anything else evidently). Though oddly enough, they aren't constrained by the French laws that forbid discounting books for sale in France.

So even if the rights issue was cleared up (and I agree that for e-books, the rights should be sold by language, not by country), there is still the issue of VAT. There used to be a sort of middleman used by software companies selling their products online - where they used a middleman to handle payment for the product, including the VAT. Haven't seen that for a while, though, and most downloadable software these days seems to be handled, at least in France, through some form of locally based distributor (with appropriately elevated prices, though the distributors do provide customer service).

[amoroso]

Originally Posted by bevdeforges

There's also the whole tax issue. I suspect the reason some vendors won't sell to "foreigners" is simply because they don't want to have to bother with the sales tax/VAT issue.

If publishers don't want to have to bother with taxes and VAT, they still have plenty of choices of things to deal with: lost sales, piracy, self publishing and the decreasing need for publishers, bankruptcy, etc.

[foghat]

^ if this tax thing really is an issue, I do not think it is the publisher who has to 'bother' with anything; I believe it would be the ebookstore itself.

If I own an online bookstore in country A and in order to sell to country B, I have to charge a tax that my system is not currently configured (or maybe does not even support) to charge, I may very well decide it is not worth the cost/effort to update my systems so I can sell product to country B.

[Stitchawl]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

Well, we're not all world-travelers! So, that means I still need to find ways to jump those hoops...

Not a problem! There are plenty of mail forwarding services listed on the Net. Just shop for one that has the country location that you'd like to use as an address.

In the US, these services usually say you need to write you box number as "PMB #123" (or what ever the number is,) but if you leave those letters out of your return address, it look like a usual house number, i.e

Stitchawl
145 Maple St #123
Anytown, USA


Stitchawl

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by Stitchawl

Not a problem! There are plenty of mail forwarding services listed on the Net. Just shop for one that has the country location that you'd like to use as an address.

In the US, these services usually say you need to write you box number as "PMB #123" (or what ever the number is,) but if you leave those letters out of your return address, it look like a usual house number, i.e

Stitchawl
145 Maple St #123
Anytown, USA


Stitchawl

I was thinking more of the CC... I can't download certain books at FW anymore, because I don't have an US registered CC, for exampe.

[sabredog]

That also applies at Diesel. Even with gift certificates.

[geertm]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

I was thinking more of the CC... I can't download certain books at FW anymore, because I don't have an US registered CC, for exampe.

If you mean the CC check on your bookshelf (instead of a download link), just use www.hidemyass.com to download the book. After downloading the books once this way the check will be gone.

To buy books just register your Fictionwise account with an USA address, and use that address also as billing address for your credit card (the address is not verified with your credit card company, this will work fine).

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by karenr_nz

how do you deal with it.

I read something else. Realistically, I can't hope to live long enough to read even a reasonable fraction of the out of copyright classics that I'd like to read.

[ShellShock]

What about localisation? I purchased the whole Sharpe series (by Bernard Cornwell) but because there does not seem to be a single site that sells all of the books I had to buy them from different sites--some from Fictionwise (USA), some from Waterstones UK. The books from FW use American spelling ("honor"), whilst from the UK they use British spelling ("honour"). So the publishers obviously do some work to localise the books. Could this be used as an excuse for geographic restrictions?

I am from the UK but I have no problems reading books with American spelling, even those by British authors. If you are from the USA, would the opposite bother you (British spelling) if you were able to buy books from a UK store?