I was rereading a book called orphans of chaos by John C. Wright. I never bought the next two in the series, but thought "you know what? I'm enjoying this. I might buy the next one. I'll buy it as an ebook". Off I go to look at the sony shops. They only have physical versions. I'm trying for an ebook so I go wider. Nothing on Smashwords, google only has hard copies. Then I find a US site that sells ebooks in epub (though I have a kindle too, so it doesn't matter that much) version. Its there! I go through the process of signing onto the site. The author has said no DRM, so thats always good. But I can't buy it because its only allowed to be sold to US people. >< Apparently author rules (or perhaps authors publishers rules). So I go to the kindle store...this edition is not available for Australian buyers.
Why?
It can't be a price import thing. I would have bought it locally using the Aus Sony shop by preference...but they didn't have it. They have a physical copy for not much more than they charge for ebooks, so its not that they can make a bunch more from the physical copy. Since they HAVE a physical copy, its not that the book can't be bought here. I can't figure this one out.
Now I could buy the physical version. But I just don't feel like it at the moment. If there hadn't been an ebook anywhere I probably would have and thought myself lucky it was still in print, but I feel like I'm being offered a digestive biscuit, while everyone else is offered a chocolate biscuit. I find my appetite fading under those conditions.
4 comments:
I fail to buy a lot of books for much the same reason.
The issue here is what rights the author licensed to the publisher. In the paper book world, everything was broken into regions, and the author would license rights by region because then they could get more money overall.
When ebooks came along (and the courts decided that point of purchase operated differently for electronic books) authors continued to license by region because that maximised their advances, and so the publishers couldn't sell the ebooks except where they'd been licensed to (though more publishers are asking for world English rights in their contract these days).
Since contracts often never earn out, authors still have a strong reason to want to maximise advances in this way, even though they end up cutting out part of the market. And sometimes publishers who have the rights in smaller regions don't exercise the book part of them.
ah, well that explains it. Shame the Aus distributor isn't ebooking this one.
Mmmm, chocolate biscuits...
Annoying, for sure. Likely to happen less and less in the future, I would guess.
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