Acquiring the full Safehold series to date

In my opinion it's not the DRM that is the big problem. It's the Geographic Restriction. I have been able to buy the Safehold ebooks, living in Sweden, but it took a long time to get some of them. There were a few years when I couldn't find anyone willing to sell the ebooks to me. I still can't get all the other ebooks (or audio books) I want to buy.

My book budget is usually twice as high as my food budget. I am willing to pay for the ebooks. For some very special ebooks I'm even willing to pay hardcover prices. Partly for the convenience of getting them immediately, partly because I don't have room for more dead tree books in my apartment.

Sure, I could throw out some of my older books to get room for new dead tree ones. But my local bookstore doesn't import many english language books. I'd have to special order them and wait a few weeks, sometimes months (there are a few books I special ordered over ten years ago and still haven't gotten). There's a nice SF/Fantasy bookstore about an hour away, but I also want to buy books in other genres.

The question is, why do they have Geographic Restrictions? Do they really think a person in Sweden, or Lebanon or Thailand (since those are the two countries mentioned previously in this thread), is more likely to pirate a bought ebook copy then a person in the US?

Someone told me, once, that it was so that the publisher or author could sell the ebook rights to the book to each country separately. But, surely they must realise that's ridiculous. Maybe it would work with something like Harry Potter or Stephen King, but not with most midlist books. The market for english language ebooks isn't that big in countries that have english as a second or third language.

The publishers are losing money with their restrictions. I'm not going to pirate the books. But I'm also not going to buy dead tree versions of books unless it's an author I already love OR unless I can look at the book in a physical store. And the physical store isn't importing everything. So instead of an ebook sale they get no sale. Is that really better?

SWM wrote:When you are arguing against DRM, you should probably use better arguments.

My understanding is that the geographic restriction has nothing to do with preventing intellectual property theft. I believe it has to do with regulations protecting domestic industries, and ensuring domestic taxation on imported e-books. These are not restrictions created by the publishers themselves, as I understand it. But I might be wrong.

SWM wrote:ensuring domestic taxation on imported e-books

Isn't that what this new VAT thing is about? The one where they now add the VAT of the buyer's location instead of whatever they used before?

Amazon is doing it. "All Romance Ebooks" is doing it. I guess I'll have to do a purchase on Baen to see if they're doing it, too, but I think I've already prebought the available Webscriptions.

I'm not happy about the 25 percent VAT on Ebooks compared to the 6 percent VAT on dead tree books here in Sweden. But that is probably the Swedish dead tree publishers' fault.

SWM wrote:Um--"we are not going to steal the books" and "as soon as the books are published, somebody scans and posts them on the net" are obviously in conflict. Somebody obviously is stealing the books.

I don't want to argue in favor of DRM (as a librarian, I see a number of problems with DRM), but you are basically arguing that a store should not put security tags on any of their products because YOU aren't the one who is stealing from them.

When you are arguing against DRM, you should probably use better arguments.

I am sorry but you have misunderstood me; I am not arguing against DRM (Eric Flint has done an eloquent job of that.
As I said, whether they are DRM free or not is immaterial, since I am not allowed to buy it.

By We, in "we aren't going to steal the books", I was referring to those like myself who are trying to buy the books and failing, so I do not see a conflict in what I say (and how DRM helps in stopping book scanning escapes me).
There always will be thieves.

ayg wrote:
I'm not happy about the 25 percent VAT on Ebooks compared to the 6 percent VAT on dead tree books here in Sweden. But that is probably the Swedish dead tree publishers' fault.

In the UK we beat you, by 1%. There is no VAT on printed books and 20% on Ebooks. I doubt if it has to do with the publishers, after all most of them publish ebooks as well as dead tree books. It's much more likely to be the government which wants to increase revenue by restricting the number of things VAT is reduced on. It's a 'stealth tax'; trying to put VAT on printed books would create an uproar from educators and the literary establishment about taxing learning and culture but the Tax men sneaked in the VAT on ebooks before they were important or widespread and people seem to have gotten kind of used to it.

I normally get the dead paper tree version of books. I am kind of an e-book novice. My sole experience is a few E-ARCs of Honorverse novels which I bought directly from Baen and I read on my laptop. Could somebody explain to me in layman's terms what DRM is? I can gather from the context of comments that non-DRM e-books are preferable to DRM e-books. But I still have no idea what DRM actually is.

Henry Brown wrote:I normally get the dead paper tree version of books. I am kind of an e-book novice. My sole experience is a few E-ARCs of Honorverse novels which I bought directly from Baen and I read on my laptop. Could somebody explain to me in layman's terms what DRM is? I can gather from the context of comments that non-DRM e-books are preferable to DRM e-books. But I still have no idea what DRM actually is.

DRM is Digital Rights Management, and is effectively a way for the book seller (or publisher) to prevent you from distributing copies of the book, or even reading them on anything but one of their approved devices. And in at least one very nasty Amazon case a few years ago, they decided that they weren't supposed to have sold a specific book, and the next time the purchasers of that book logged in to their Amazon account, it deleted the book from their system (and graciously refunded them their money). Eric Flint has a very good set of articles on the baen.com website (I don't have the exact URL right now) debunking most of the pro-DRM arguments.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

Henry Brown wrote:I normally get the dead paper tree version of books. I am kind of an e-book novice. My sole experience is a few E-ARCs of Honorverse novels which I bought directly from Baen and I read on my laptop. Could somebody explain to me in layman's terms what DRM is? I can gather from the context of comments that non-DRM e-books are preferable to DRM e-books. But I still have no idea what DRM actually is.

DRM is Digital Rights Management, and is effectively a way for the book seller (or publisher) to prevent you from distributing copies of the book, or even reading them on anything but one of their approved devices. And in at least one very nasty Amazon case a few years ago, they decided that they weren't supposed to have sold a specific book, and the next time the purchasers of that book logged in to their Amazon account, it deleted the book from their system (and graciously refunded them their money). Eric Flint has a very good set of articles on the baen.com website (I don't have the exact URL right now) debunking most of the pro-DRM arguments.

Thank you.

I was recently forced to upgrade my Kindle to a new model after the old one decided to go into slow-reboot/freeze up.
I have lost at least seven books because of this.



The problem isn't DRM itself, it's how it's implemented.

Randomiser wrote:In the UK we beat you, by 1%. There is no VAT on printed books and 20% on Ebooks. I doubt if it has to do with the publishers, after all most of them publish ebooks as well as dead tree books. It's much more likely to be the government which wants to increase revenue by restricting the number of things VAT is reduced on. It's a 'stealth tax'; trying to put VAT on printed books would create an uproar from educators and the literary establishment about taxing learning and culture but the Tax men sneaked in the VAT on ebooks before they were important or widespread and people seem to have gotten kind of used to it.

"Vastly Abominable Tax" was foisted on the UK by the (then) Common Market.
Everything is subject to it but many items carry a Zero Rate
Under the malign influence of the European Union taxes are to be "Harmonised" and the zero rate is no longer permitted
Items presently zero rated may remain so and certain items deemed "socially necessary such as energy may be taxed at a reduced rate but any new product MUST be taxed at the full rate.

Blame the federalists in Brussels for this imposition on e-books

I confidently expect the "War of Continental Aggression" in a few years.