But I could buy the dead tree for that!

[lexin]

The price of ebooks. Yes.

I was looking today at Waterstones web site, hoping to find interesting and worthwhile ebooks for the beloved Sony reader which never leaves my side. Dear friends, Waterstones are crap. And people from outside the US/Canada can't buy from the Sony bookstore. I don't know why, you'd think our money would be as good as anybody's, but we can't.

Worse than their choice, for which no better word exists than 'abysmal', ebooks that I'd buy from them, just to have a copy by my side while I'm travelling, cost as much as, and sometimes more than, the dead tree version. Case in point, The Hobbit is £5.49 (a discount on the list price of £6.99), but the dead tree version is £4.19 – though its list price is also £6.99, the discount they offer is larger. Take also Lindsey Davis's newest book, Alexandria, £12.14 in the dead tree (hardback) version, but a whopping £17.47 in the ebook version. Even the list price of the ebook version is more over £21 as opposed to £18. Needless to say, I didn't buy it.

Thank goodness for Fictionwise and for smaller publishers. If I bought bestsellers I'd be even more seriously peeved than I already am.

Comments

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

Amazon may not, but some other e-tailers have prevented selling region 1 disks outside of Region 1. I also think they I have tried to buy a specific Region 1 disc from Amazon US and been refused, but I can't remember what disc it was or if it was actually Amazon, as it's been ages since it happened.

As I understand things, a DVD distributor can restrict who they will supply, and so can issue a contract that includes a "will not sell out of region" clause. Of course once someone has bought a Region 1 DVD in the US, they are then allowed to resell it, including to people outside the US ... so I guess it is in the contract between the ebook publisher and Amazon.

[ringbark.livejournal.com]

While I was living in New Zealand, there was a particular BBC DVD I wanted, so I tried to order it from the BBC shop. They refused to ship it outside the EU (or perhaps a slightly different area) so I ended up buying it from Amazon UK instead.