When traveling abroad, U.S. residents can buy books from the U.S. as usual but have to pay $2 more for them due to cost of wireless outside the U.S., it’s said. But they can at least buy them.

B&N for now has said that U.S. travelers abroad cannot buy books from the U.S. B&N store but can read what they already have on their Nooks. They hope to change this later on.

In the meantime, those travelling abroad who have Nooks CAN use WiFi to buy from other places like Sony (if Sony store carries the book). Sony’s e-books can be read by the Nook but not vice versa because of B&N’s method of credit card keying on its DRM thing with Adobe.

I read that Adobe is trying to solve that prob.

Now we have a situation in which authors and their agents are refusing to do global rights deals – they like the old way, where they could negotiate a per-country contract and get an advance on each new contract. So many, many books are “in limbo” in terms of ebook sales outside the US or UK, for example. Add to that the fact that agents are seeking much higher royalty percentages (even while demanding new advances and multiple contracts which = high legal costs for the big publishers, and you have a world of geographic/language fences being built around ebooks.

Doing this was proven to be a wonderful recipe to encourage Napster back in the early days of digital music; it happened again when the Harry Potter series was not allowed to go to ebook. All this is only going to encourage pirate sites and spur greater efforts to use ever-nastier DRM schemes. No one benefits.

I will have to remember to change it back….

Jim

I used to like ebooks but since I don’t live in the America but Australia it useless.

So don’t bother

I’ve written to them as I can’t see how I can use my membership. Hopefully I will still be able to use the hefty balance I have in Micropay…

Seems the only way round that would be to verify your card whilst on Holidays in the US using a US IP address.

That said, I purchased another book today from B&N and so far it has allowed me to do so…except I got hung up when it asked me for my C/C number. I haven;’t gotten around to digging out my C/C yet so for now, the book will remain unlocked. I’m incredibly annoyed by this requirement too…what happened to the username and password? why do I have to dig out my C/C?! definitely reduces the convenience factor.

I also second the comments about terrible customer service. I sent an email 2 weeks ago and received an assurance my concern was in the system and I would receive a response. Other than that, I have NOT received anything.

Thank goodness for Sony eReader. I d/l the reader, purchased the book I was not “allowed” to purchase on B&N, and didn’t have to go through the crap of C/C verification.

When I had formatting problems in the book, there is an online chat system for help. when they couldn’t help me, they sent me on to their call centre. I got prompt assistance and even callbacks afterwards. Because they couldn’t resolve the problem right away, they gave me a credit for the price I paid. 2 weeks later, they have continued to follow up with me as they attempt to resolve the issue. Now that’s what I call good customer service.

where else can we go to purchase ebooks? sony ereader is good but has limited title selections. I don’t have a kindle (I read on my netbook) so I don’t believe I can download from amazon.

I just can’t believe the sheer silliness B&N is displaying. sure there’s no probs if you live in the US. But if you don’t….you might as well live in outer space apparently.

Looking around on the net, the only place I can see books I want is on bit-torrent, which is very unfortunate…..

As far as the geographic rights? Who knows. If sales slump enough, or shops close up leaving unpaid publishers/authors.

Or when the average reader is talking about downloading for free at the supermarket.