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Why won’t you take my money, you stupid moronic dummy?
I like reading, specifically, science fiction and fantasy has always had a huge pull on my imagination. That let me to a great series of books by Ilona Andrews, the latest of which has just come out.
I live in Israel, and shipping time & cost from the US is quite prohibitive. At times, I have paid four or five times the cost of the book just to be able to get the bloody thing. So the rise of the Kindle filled me with a great sense of relief. I got a Kindle and started reading on that (I love it). I estimate that I read over 200 books on the thing already.
One thing that I really like is the ability to pre order a book, get it on my Kindle when it is out, and start reading immediately. But recently I have gotten several notifications about books that I really wanted to read. Here is one:
We're writing to let you know that we've canceled your order for Magic Bleeds because it will not be released by the publisher in Kindle format on Tuesday, May 25, 2071 as previously expected. We don't yet have a date for when this item will be released for Kindle. We will send you an email notifying you when the Kindle edition becomes available.
Okay, annoying. Let us hit audible.com and see if they have the audio book version available. It appears that this is not the case… but I can buy the CD version, which requires physical shipping, from Amazon.
Where does it leaves me?
There seems to be no way for me to get the book in a reasonable timeframe/cost.
Wait, let me rephrase that. There appears to be no legal way. While I have no direct knowledge of that, I am guessing that if I hit a torrent site and try to search for the book, I would not only find the book, but will be able to get the freaking thing faster than going with the legal download route.
It is actually quite simple. I would really like to give you some money, if you make it harder for me to give you money, you won’t get my money.
This decision is stupid, moronic, idiotic, senseless, irritating, annoying and in general lack all sense.
~Ayende the annoyed
Comments
May 25, 2071 eh? seems you are getting upset 61 years early it seems.... XD
Release date in 2071? Wow, slow writer...
Couldn't agree more...
One other thing that is annoying as hell is that a lot of books are for US market only (+Canada maybe).
But, owning ePub-capable reader you have so much broader choice of publishers (in no particular order):
Fictionwise/Barnes & Noble, BooksOnBoard, RandomHouse, Sony eBook Store, Diesel Books, Tor Books, Night Shade Books to name a few.
Yes, Kindle has wireless auto-delivery and most other readers must be synced manually, but I find it a little price to pay.
May 25, 2071 is not a Tuesday.
I agree it's a complete pain. I love my Kindle deeply, the ability to download a new book immediately is brilliant (although the $2 charge to download free books overseas is annoying)
My real pain points are the inability to give or lend a book to another kindle owner (although if my wife likes my kindle when we're on holiday I couldl share my amazon account with her, but why should I have too) I can't be bothered to break the DRM but if we get two Kindles I can see my self doing it.
Also regional distribution rights really annoy me. Currently in the UK I only have access to two Ilona Andrews books on my Kindle and I can't complete my Terry Pratchett collection.
get the book from torrents and when it is published, buy it, to keep your conscience clear ;)
Not that it will make you feel better but got the book yesterday and missed a deadline finishing it. Its pretty good.
Congrats on shipping Raven.
Couldn't agree more, there are so many things that are downloaded illegally not because it is free but because it is simply EASIER!
iTunes is a prime example that if you make something that is simple and easy to use people will buy buy buy because it's less friction, plus it is also risk free. Personally I don't buy of iTunes as I hate the software :)
I always download everything I need from illegal sources because not only is it cheaper but it also so much more convenient. It's ridiculous that games start to get even more DRM so that is is even harder to resist the temptation to leech it. There must be at least some advantage in exchange for the money you pay.
And I want to add that it literally takes 10 minutes download any movie I want because Germany has fast internet connections. How could a physical store or a DRM laden game compete with that?
I feel your pain brother. only if those people could trust people a bit more and instead of spending their time taking torrent guys to court, spent it on making things faster, easier and cleaner...
Cannot agreed more.
This is not only for books. This limitations are for all of the goods I WANT TO BUY. I WANT to give money to the people that produce this good for ME.
But it is always simpler to google and download torrent file then BUY it. I WANT to pay all of those people for their work, but I DON'T want to do charity.
Why publishers don't trust me? I haven't done anything bad.
Instead. They spend millions of dollars in courts to block ThePirateBay.com for TWO fucking hours. RIDICULOUS.
And what I got?
I buy games in PSN for PSP in store. And DOWNLOAD them from torrents :( Because I DO LOVE to read books on my PSP.
They recently did a survey here in Australia about piracy and it showed pretty clearly that most people that admitted to pirating were doing so primarily out of convenience than cost.
T.V. shows are a ripe target here mainly because what little U.S. T.V. is aired in Oz, it often isn't released here until a year or more after it airs in the U.S. Movies are typically 1-2 months behind U.S. premiers.
Rather than spending their money to make distribution more convenient, allowing consumers to get access to it cheaply, and more importantly, QUICKLY, they tie up releases with litigation and spend money and more time trying to secure their product from unauthorized distribution, fueling the fire for illegal distribution. It's industry driven by paranoid bone-heads.
The part I love is how when I buy a legal DVD, I'm the one that has to sit through several (often unskippable) minutes of crap from the publisher on how wrong it is to steal movies. I've heard that on BlueRay that crap is even worse, to the point that someone posted a video on YouTube that they could start streaming and watching an illegal copy of a movie faster than their Blueray player could start it up on a disc.
I am not sure what you're complaining about. Amazon says it hasn't been published yet so it's not Amazon's fault, even though they got the date wrong. No other bookseller will have it if it's not published yet, including for people in the US. In some countries, delivery is not even guaranteed like in your neighbor, Egypt, where things just "don't arrive". Consider yourself luckier than others.
Don't you know anyone in the US who can Fedex it for you? If you read that many books, it means your incoming stream of them is steady so you're not in a bad shape.
2071? what the heck. ?
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