Frustration with Geographic Restrictions and E-Book stores in general

[KevinH]

I am beginning to think that geographic restrictions make no sense when applied to e-books. They obviously do not apply for print books. I have never been turned down buying a book in stock at any book store in any airport or country in which I have visited.

So here is my rant about current e-book stores and publishers ...

I recently found Steven Erikson's work (fantasy - but not children's) and started to read his main series. I liked them. I was able to find books 1 and 2 via Amazon (in Kindle format).

I live in Canada (and so for that matter does the author Steven Erikson!). Unfortunately trying to buy his third book in any e-book format in Canada is next to impossible.

Amazon has Kindle format e-books of all his books available for US residents but only books 1 and 2 to Canadians (up until the most recent).

So I tried EReader and Barnes and Noble - no luck

I next tried Stanza - Fictionwise and again no luck.

Our big book chain in Canada is Indigo/Chapters. They point you to the Kobos site for e-books, and again no luck there at all. If you ask them in the store about e-books they look like you are crazy.

I tried the Sony Online bookstore and again a few of his works but not the one I was looking for.

I tried manybooks.net. I tried every damn ebook store that I could find. But living in Canada has made it next to impossible.

No luck.

Finally went to Waterstone's in the UK and was able to buy the book (a bit more expensive given the price in Pounds) but ...

Have e-book stores missed the whole point?!?

Why are they not "stocking" the entire series from an author when the marginal cost of carrying that "additional inventory" is 0?

Why are they not creating e-book versions of the previously popular (high selling) but out-of-print works?

Why limit anything based on where your internet connection or credit-card is based? No print book-store does it?

Why are they charging more than the current paperback prices for the books that are out in paperback or even older than that?

Why are they pricing books in Canada based on out-of-date exchange rates just because it is printed on the cover of the printed book?

I want to buy e-books and the bookstores and the publishers are going out of their way to make it difficult!!!!!!!!!

There is a huge market opportunity for the first good international e-book store that understands this and makes it easy to find books, buy books, etc without all of the stupidity in the current system - sad really.

End of rant

[asjogren]

If countries continue to push the copyright privilege to absurdities and publishers continue to control the market, perhaps some "rogue" country will take advantage and create their own media eBusiness.

Kind of like some small island nations and taxation. Or certain small countries and banking.

In the meantime, perhaps you can become a "temporary" US resident with a fake address, a VPN, and a prepaid credit card.

They just don't want your money! They would rather have control. Sick!

[tench]

I'm not knowledgeable enough to answer your many questions, but if you search through the forum I think you may find that a lot of them have been discussed thoroughly in the past.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by KevinH

I am beginning to think that geographic restrictions make no sense when applied to e-books.

No they don't, but they're not really meant to benefit consumers.

[clockworkzombie]

I have purchased two books from Fictionwise in the last year. The other titles were all region locked. I attempted to buy about 20 books from them. I may have bought more if it were possible to do so.

Edit

I have been buying from the Baen Books ebook section http://www.webscription.net/ and could not be happier.

[MrBlueSky]

KevinH, now you know why file-sharing is such an attractive alternative.

All nine of Steven Erikson's series (plus the three satellite novels by Ian C. Esslemont) are readily available, and extremely well formatted in HTML, over all the usual (nn-standard) networks with no DRM, no geographical restrictions and (mostly) through an easy one-click download method.

You sir, have jumped through a hell of a lot more hoops that I am willing to jump through in an effort to PAY Mr. Erickson to read his books -- and he is one of the very few authors I'd willingly go out of my way to to do THAT for.

I don't care about their politics, their business reasons or their monopoly practices as being reasons for all this restrictive nonsense -- I just want to read his goddam books. If they don't want me to pay for the 'privilege' of doing so, that's fine by me -- I can find plenty of other stuff to spend my money on.

And no, before anybody jumps in with the usual excuses, justifications and rationals against file-sharing, I am not going to 'go without' simply because of their sheer incompetence in serving A POTENTIAL CUSTOMER.

Their loss, not mine.

[Erina]

Correct me if I am wrong ( and I know this is very simplictic ) but the author signs a publishing deal with the publisher - in some cases its worldwide with one large publisher in which case the eBook version is usually available worldwide OR the publisher is local. At that point it depends on the contract and whether the book is popular. If the book takes off either the author or the publisher will look to sign a deal in other countries with sometimes different publishers in each country. So the Europe publisher wants to protect his rights and makes sure the US publisher cant sell outside the US.
The author just wants his book sold everywhere someone wants to buy it. The publishers are just protecting their business rights.
What we need is some way of all authors being able to publish worldwide - but I have no idea how to do that. A worldwide economy is a dream ( nightmare? ) that is much more involved than just eBooks.
Until then, if its not available in your location, tell the author he is missing a sale. Or do what ever you have to do to get the book you want.

[sabredog]

I have all the same problems. Hopefully sense will prevail and Publishers will realise their customer base might increase if GR was abolished, put to bed and forgotten about. But I will not hold my breath over that hope.

Personally it is pretty bad when ebookstores proudly advertise their store sells internationally when most of their inventory is unavailable to international customers.

[K-Thom]

Simple: get rid of publishers. Or rely only on those who are willing to serve both customers and authors.

There is no reason at all why a publisher in the US couldn't licence the printing rights to any regional publisher worldwide but still retain the rights to publish the books in English worldwide.
That's so silly.

[Erina]

The US publisher may not have the UK / Europe printing rights ( each contract is different ) and / or the US wont pay advertising / promotions expenses in foreign countries. The core problem is we dont have a world wide economic system but a collection of national systems.
Cant see it happening any decade soon either.

[HansTWN]

This has been discussed at lengths in various threads. There are numerous reasons for why we have these restrictions, including tax laws and trade matters. But while I can understand such restrictions for customers from other countries where a distribution contract for an English version exists it makes no sense for such countries where they have no distribution at all or only foreign language versions.

Obviously printed books are different. When you buy a printed book in the US and have it sent overseas you will definitely pay a lot more than buying even a much more expensive version in your own country, since you have to shell out for shipping and, perhaps, taxes. So nobody cares if US sellers sell physical books to foreign customers.

Newcomers can search for old threads on this. Fortunately we can easily circumvent these restrictions, and I am glad to try to help anyone who contacts me by PM. Please do not discuss actual workarounds in the forums, we don't want the loopholes to be closed.

Regional restrictions exist for many things, not just books. Try buying electronics in the US. A lot of ereaders are US only, or much cheaper in the US. The US is a giant market and Americans tend to be extremely price sensitive. Higher prices can be set in other countries. And producers/publishers do not want to be totally at the mercy of US sellers. Online people would naturally go to those sites with the lowest prices. How could sellers in countries with taxes for online transactions compete? Who would promote the books locally?

I can easily imagine a scenario where brick and mortar bookstores in Australia, Canada, the UK and other countries would "punish" a publisher by not carrying their pbooks anymore because that publisher is giving US sellers worldwide ebook rights.

[K-Thom]

I can easily imagine a scenario where brick and mortar bookstores in Australia, Canada, the UK and other countries would "punish" a publisher by not carrying their pbooks anymore because that publisher is giving US sellers worldwide ebook rights.

Bookstores? Do they still exist? That's so 20th centuryish ... kinda quaint, though.

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by KevinH

I am beginning to think that geographic restrictions make no sense when applied to e-books.

They do, it's just unfortunate that they are getting in the way of a consumer like yourself.

• Different nations have different sales tax policies; e.g. the UK and EU have VAT, the US does not. There is no international clearing-house for sales taxes.
• Curent region restrictions are based on the contracts between the publisher and the author. The publisher is limited by that contract.
• Authors do want to sell books, but they don't necessarily want to turn over all international rights to one regional publisher. (E.g. Bloomsbury UK may not have been the ideal company to sell Harry Potter exclusively around the world.)
• Contracts, and other issues like tax collections, do not become null and void just because 5 years ago, someone figured out how to easily distribute content internationally.
• A US publisher is unlikely to have the expertise required to really sell an international edition -- e.g. translations, local marketing, navigating local laws, setting the title up at prominent local retailers, getting the book reviewed and so forth. As usual, people imagine that publishers spend 90% of their time smoking cigars and counting money, when they are actually expending all kinds of resources to get books sold.

I've noticed that lots of MR readers throw a fit when a publisher does something they don't think fits the contract such as proclaim they hold ebook rights when it wasn't specified in the contract -- but then turn right around and blast publishers for actually abiding by the contracts, by not violating the stipulations to sell outside their region. Go figure....

Originally Posted by KevinH

Why are they not "stocking" the entire series from an author when the marginal cost of carrying that "additional inventory" is 0?

• Because the cost is not zero. It can cost quite a bit of money to convert a book into epub, mobi or other formats.
• Because ebooks, for all the hype, still constitute 3-5% of sales (possibly less, internationally)
• Because rights over electronic editions are not always clear-cut. It's explicitly addressed in more recent contracts, but not always in older agreements.
• In the US alone, around 250k new books are published each year; somewhere around 45k of those are fiction. If the publishers wanted to just convert all new fiction books from the last 10 years, that alone hits close to half a million books. And obviously, priority is going to the new books, which have much stronger sales than back catalog titles.

Originally Posted by KevinH

Why are they charging more than the current paperback prices for the books that are out in paperback or even older than that?

That's relatively rare. Also, it really doesn't cost a lot less to make a paper edition than an ebook edition -- maybe 15%.

Originally Posted by KevinH

I want to buy e-books and the bookstores and the publishers are going out of their way to make it difficult!!!!!!!!!

Again, your frustration is understandable, but you really ought to calm down. Ebooks are just getting started, and there are millions upon millions of books that need to be converted, lots of legal issues to be sorted out, and both publisher and author resources are finite. Contracts, international law, authors, publishers, retailers, and society at large do not perform 180º turns the second you bought your ebook reader.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by K-Thom

Bookstores? Do they still exist? That's so 20th centuryish ... kinda quaint, though.

We still have all those pbook sniffers around, haven't you noticed? The aroma of the glue, maybe they have a special recipe? Some addictive drugs, perhaps?

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Again, your frustration is understandable, but you really ought to calm down. Ebooks are just getting started, and there are millions upon millions of books that need to be converted, lots of legal issues to be sorted out, and both publisher and author resources are finite. Contracts, international law, authors, publishers, retailers, and society at large do not perform 180º turns the second you bought your ebook reader.

Yes, and with the help of other people on this forum you can get your books now with a few tricks while we all wait for this whole mess to be sorted out.