eReader.com Limits E-book Sales To US Citizens 182
An anonymous reader writes "eReader.com seems to have begun applying distribution restrictions to its library. I first noticed that there was a FAQ page about distribution restrictions this morning. When I tried to order a few books this afternoon I simply couldn't — a large banner on the order confirmation told me the books had distribution restrictions. I checked a number of titles but it seems a large number of books are no longer available to non-US citizens like me. It is interesting to note that this policy change got implemented shortly after Barnes&Noble purchased Fictionwise. I have no idea if the new owners are behind this new policy but it seems crazy to restrict sales of ebooks. I've bought dozens of ebooks from eReader the past 4 years. I still have 15 dollar store credit but cannot buy any of the books I am interested in." (Right now, the link that should display these new geographic restrictions returns an error message that says the page is being updated.) Sounds like Barnes & Noble is taking its cues from Apple.
No story here (Score:3, Interesting)
Outdated contracts based on a pre-Internet view reduce company's profits yet again.
Why can't I view youtube videos to follow at 11.
Re:Link for Geographic Restrictions (Score:5, Interesting)
This may be one of the historical reasons for the restrictions, but I don't think it has much to do with the present reasons for them.
To start off with, you have to understand that traditional-style print publishing is an extremely capital-intensive business. It costs a huge amount of money to set a traditional (not print-on-demand) printing setup for a run. Once you have it set up, the incremental cost of producing one more book is virtually zero. Then you have this huge inventory, which you have to hope you can sell. Because of this, magazines and book publishing houses want to make sure that their contract with the author is exclusive. I've sold some short fiction, and typically what happens is that they want first North American serial rights (FNASR) and exclusivity for a certain amount of time. Books are somewhat different, but it's still the same general concept either way. If they're going to spend the money to put you in print, they want to be damn sure that readers will be getting your writing through them. (By the way, most short fiction markets don't mind at all if you put your work up for free online after a certain amount of time has elapsed.)
However, it would be ridiculous for them to try to demand that kind of exclusivity worldwide. In many cases they simply don't have marketing, sales, and distribution in other countries, so demanding exclusivity would do them no good, and would do the author harm.
There are also all kinds of other things that the publisher doesn't want exclusivity for because they're not in a position to exercise the rights effectively. For instance, it's very common these days for people to publish short fiction in a magazine, and then afterward sell audio rights so that people can buy a recording to listed to on their iPod or in their car. In the case of short fiction, there's also the possibility that it will be anthologized, and that's something a book publisher is going to handle, not the magazine publisher. None of this is an evil plot. It's just common business sense.
By the way, in my opinion Fictionwise is very cool. As a writer, I need to be familiar with my genre (SF). If someone tells me, "You've got to read 'Out of All Them Bright Stars' by Nancy Kress," I want to read it. The library doesn't have it, and I don't particularly want to pay $10-20 for an anthology so that I can read that one story. Well, I can simply buy it on fictionwise for a buck. Best deal ever. It's like being able to buy one song on iTunes or Amazon rather than having to buy the whole album full of crappy filler that you didn't want.
The new anti-internet (Score:2, Interesting)
Wasn't the Internet supposed to break down physical barriers like distance etc.? Things like this really start to piss me off.
I am also a non-US person and the hoops we need to jump to to get stuff is unreal. I don't get it either... If we buy stuff over the Net in the US, the producer of the goods/services still get their share, so why must I wait 1 or 2 years before the material is available in my country?
O well - there will be a way to circumvent this shortly. I'll just add to my ever growing list :-)
Re:Link for Geographic Restrictions (Score:4, Interesting)
Agreed. I am writing a computer system for use in Spain. Most of the translations just go into a database of strings that the customer translates as and when.
I had to demo a couple of screens that had missing translations. I don't speak Spanish but I tried to do these in a mechanical style - just copying parts of translations that were already done. Most of them were slightly wrong in some way.
Also some small parts use hard-coded strings in javascript. I ran these through Google translate and asked them to point out any problems. There were only about 30 words / phrases in total.
I got complaints that on the date selector, March and May were translated as Marcha and Puede (March as in walking, May as in 'may I...'). And there were many complaints about shortened phrases - removing words such as 'of' is generally fine in English when pushed for space, but not in Spanish.
This reminds me of something... (Score:2, Interesting)
The two big things on the list were Magazines and books. Even when you took the old Canadian dollar value into account, it still didn't add up to the amount we Canadians were being charged. (I had even seen Canadian written books, published and produced in Canada being sold for 40% more than the listed American price).
So, naturally, Canadians started getting pissed off and demanding that retailers sell the item to them at the listed US price. Many retailers were happy to oblige.
Publishers, on the other hand, weren't too fond of the events that were transpiring. Within a few months they had started replacing the books and magazines on the shelves with ones with adjusted pricing.
And by adjusted pricing, I mean, books and magazines with the American pricing removed so Canadian consumers wouldn't be able to see the difference in price.
Apple (Score:1, Interesting)
The only reason why Apple changed its policy is because they were sued by the European Commission. If there's one company that has a history of trying to lock people in, it's precisely Apple.