New ebook store for Australia and New Zealand

[cbell]

Thank you all for your enthusiasm!

Katti's Cat, I think it's likely you're our very first customer - I'll see if I can confirm this.

We're learning as we go and the suggestion of a category of Australian authors sounds good. You'll see there's a couple of Australian authors on the front page today.

You can filter your searches so you can easily see Australian and NZ publishers - that's a start.

I can see today will be busy and exciting here in Melbourne!

[troykm]

well the store is open and it looks like i will keep using the pirate bay. i will not pay those prices for a few hundred kb of digital text, there is no justification for it. to bad it could have been a great thing

[cbell]

Katti, I ran a report and I can see that you're in the first five purchasers, but I can't see if you're the first. I can't see what anyone orders, just if they've set up an account and made a purchase.

Wow, this is really interesting - At least 4 out of the first 5 purchases at our store are by MR members and they're all contributors to this thread. I know the 5th purchaser, but I don't know if she's at MR (I'll ask her). Thank you, everyone!

Troy, I hope you'll come back some time to see what else is available - we're adding more content every day.

[troykm]

Dan Brown The lost symbol is $24.13 for the ebook

i paid $19.99 for the real, hard cover book.

kathy reichs 206 bones $23.62

kindle store $15.78 ($17.20aud)

looks like Australians get ripped off again. please tell me why we must pay such high prices for digital content. i mean its not like a new copy has to be printed for every purchase. once a book is on the server, its there!

[kevine]

Originally Posted by troykm

Dan Brown The lost symbol is $24.13 for the ebook

i paid $19.99 for the real, hard cover book.

kathy reichs 206 bones $23.62

kindle store $15.78 ($17.20aud)

looks like Australians get ripped off again. please tell me why we must pay such high prices for digital content. i mean its not like a new copy has to be printed for every purchase. once a book is on the server, its there!

Economies of scale - we are a very small market compared to Europe or USA. Maybe also local inefficient publishers/distributors, like most Aus products. You can have smaller margins if you have a millions kindles compared to hundreds or maybe thousands of Ecoreaders.

You also won't see ebooks being dumped/on-sale to reduce excess stock. Dan brown is $32 reduced from a supposed $49 on Dymocks Online. Makes the ebook price look good to me.

To be honest, I'm just happy we are able to buy ebooks locally at a small discount over paper. I'm more concerned about the limited range than attempting to compete with Amazon prices.

It is disappointing that the range is still smaller than the restricted-to-OZ kindle range - hopefully that will improve.

cheers

- Kevin

[Solicitous]

Ok if what I'm asking does exist on the website but I am unable to find it, please point it out to me.

Is it possible to have freely to download samples of both .epub and .pdf so we can get an idea of how well the pages are created (margins etc)??

[AlexBell]

Geographic restrictions?

I went on early this morning and tried to buy three books. When I tried to checkout I got a message that one or more of the books had geographic restrictions. It did not say which book was restricted, and would not let me buy any of the three.

Anyone else had this problem?

I checked my account and confirmed that I am registered as living in Australia.

Regards, Alex

[AlexBell]

How do pdfs read on an ECO Reader?

I've had bad experiences with pdfs on my ECO Reader in the past. How do the ones available from Read Without Paper seem?

Regards, Alex

[Katti's Cat]

Originally Posted by troykm

Dan Brown The lost symbol is $24.13 for the ebook

i paid $19.99 for the real, hard cover book.

kathy reichs 206 bones $23.62

kindle store $15.78 ($17.20aud)

looks like Australians get ripped off again. please tell me why we must pay such high prices for digital content. i mean its not like a new copy has to be printed for every purchase. once a book is on the server, its there!

I do agree that the prices for eBooks are expensive. You can thank the government for that. I don't expect any business to continuously give away stuff - they are not charities.

And yes, I will continue to look on the web for the best price available for me - but if it is a question of buying overseas for a few cent less or locally for a bit more I will go locally.

And so far I have resisted the temptation of getting pirated books. I just wait and hope they drop in price eventually. It's not as if I need the latest book right now - read list is an arm long already.

[Katti's Cat]

Originally Posted by cbell

Katti, I ran a report and I can see that you're in the first five purchasers, but I can't see if you're the first. I can't see what anyone orders, just if they've set up an account and made a purchase.

Wow, this is really interesting - At least 4 out of the first 5 purchases at our store are by MR members and they're all contributors to this thread. I know the 5th purchaser, but I don't know if she's at MR (I'll ask her). Thank you, everyone!

Troy, I hope you'll come back some time to see what else is available - we're adding more content every day.

Ah well, among the first 5 is not too bad either

[AprilHare]

OK, it's opened!
The blurb promised big name authors such as Thomas Keneally, so I did a search for him today.
I could only find two of his books - both of them non-fiction: Abraham Lincoln (2003) and Australians - Origins to Eureka (2009).
What about his other works? Searching for Schindler: A Memoir? Schindler's Ark (later renamed Schindler's List)? The People's Train? Et cetera..

[troykm]

ok i bought a book :-)

i could not help myself

[cbell]

Our ebook store is based on Overdrive. At Overdrive, you can download free samples of WMA and MP3 files, but I don't believe there's free samples of ebooks available. I'll check.

http://www.overdrive.com/resources/drc/#test

You can do an advanced search on PDF titles with a price ="<$5.00", then sort the results by clicking on "price". There's several pages of PDF titles that are less than $1.00 each.

We're adding more titles as they become available.

Thanks, Troy

[Solicitous]

Originally Posted by kevine

Economies of scale - we are a very small market compared to Europe or USA. Maybe also local inefficient publishers/distributors, like most Aus products. You can have smaller margins if you have a millions kindles compared to hundreds or maybe thousands of Ecoreaders.

You also won't see ebooks being dumped/on-sale to reduce excess stock. Dan brown is $32 reduced from a supposed $49 on Dymocks Online. Makes the ebook price look good to me.

To be honest, I'm just happy we are able to buy ebooks locally at a small discount over paper. I'm more concerned about the limited range than attempting to compete with Amazon prices.

It is disappointing that the range is still smaller than the restricted-to-OZ kindle range - hopefully that will improve.

cheers

- Kevin

Actually I don't think it is a case of Economies of Scale (yes I have done economics). We are in a current situation where as a consumer we are not really restricted to local markets, we are living in a global market. Gone are the days of only being able to buy a book/cd/computer/whatever from the local guy, we can now buy nationally or internationally with the click of a button.

Where the high price comes from IMHO is local book publishers are just starting to get their feet wet, coupled with customs duties + gst etc.

[Solicitous]

Originally Posted by troykm

well the store is open and it looks like i will keep using the pirate bay. i will not pay those prices for a few hundred kb of digital text, there is no justification for it. to bad it could have been a great thing

Well it is actually a good thing. There are a number of books that are reasonably priced (Wheel of Time fans celebrate, $11.00 per book), but there are a few that made me shudder, Clive Cussler books, some were around the $25 mark (with 20% discount). But we can't forget this is day one of the website and overall I think it is damn good, its not like all their books are highly priced.

I'm awaiting patiently for epub and pdf samples to appear or someone give a quick review on the quality of the ebook files. Anyone bought a book they'd care to tell how well the ebooks are formatted etc?