I’m getting more and more annoyed peed off with eReader.com’s geographic restrictions on purchases outside of the United States.
Let me set the background, I’m in the UK, I have been purchasing ebooks from eReader.com since the company started back in 2000 when they were called Palm Digital Media. I have invested a huge some of money in eReader’s (now owned by Barnes and Noble) ebooks with their DRM (Digital Rights Management). I like liked eReader, and have purchased 133 ebooks in my library. At an average of $10 an ebook, that means I’ve spent around $1,330 to my collection, approx £1,000! It has DRM which means you can’t share ebooks easily, as it uses your credit card number to unlock the book along with the name on your card, but I don’t mind that, providing I can install it onto multiple devices that I take with me, I don’t care. I’m really not into sharing ebooks.
Nearly every book I now try to purchase from eReader.com comes back with ”Warning: The eBook you just added to your cart has geographic rights restrictions“.
This message is unfortunately complete BS from eReader.com. There are no geographic restrictions for most of these books, and I’ll tell you why.
Try to purchase Dan Brown’s “The Lost Symbol” outside of the US and you are greeted by the same message – GEOGRAPHICALLY RESTRICTED!
Okay, now let’s go to Audible.com, I can add Dan Brown’s “The Lost Symbol” to my shopping cart and check out just fine.
Let’s go to the iTunes App Store, and I can purchase Dan Brown’s “The Lost Symbol” just fine as an ebook, I can even download a free sampler of the ebook!
Now let’s go to Kindle on the iPhone, and I can purchase Dan Brown’s “The Lost Symbol” here too, and like with iTunes, I can also download a sampler version of the ebook!
So unfortunately eReader.com are simply not telling the truth about the geographic restrictions on purchases. I’m not sure if this started happening since Fictionwise.com purchased eReader.com or since Barnes and Noble acquired eReader.com through Fictionwise.com.
I wanted to purchase around $80 of eBooks this Christmas from eReader.com but they won’t let me do so. So now I’m going to go and spend it with Amazon! At this point I’m not going to spend any more money with eReader.com, Fictionwise and Barnes and Noble and that includes the new purchase of the Nook that I was about to purchase. Really….What’s the point? I’m going to have the same geographic restrictions imposed on me by Barnes and Noble.
I welcome any feedback from eReader.com, Fictionwise and Barnes and Noble on the topic of Geographic Restrictions on Purchases and why they are hiding behind this charade and not telling the truth to their customers.
[UPDATE]
More links on this subject…
Geographic Restrictions at Fictionwise
eReader.com Limits E-book Sales To US Citizens
eReader enforcing geographical restrictions
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