Dear authors/publishers/people who make cash from books
Don’t you LIKE money? Here’s an update for all of you – not everybody lives in LA or New York. Shocking I know. Some of us, me for example, don’t even live in America. I live in Africa.
Africa. Yes, there’s no real need to specify exactly where in Africa (South Africa in case you were wondering) if Hollywood’s to be believed. No Hollywood movie has ever felt the need to specify a specific country in Africa, but rather act as though the entire continent is one place.
But I digress, as usual. In fact, this rant actually requires us to lump Africa into one single territory, as appears to be the case with book publishers.
Long story short – the availability of various eBooks (and I’m looking at you, Mr Amazon Kindle) and audiobooks (and I’m looking at you, Mr Audible.com, which happens to be owned by Amazon) tends to be severely limited to those of us not sitting in either America-f*ck-yeah or Europe.
The number of electronic and audiobooks that I have wanted to buy, but which are listed as not being available to shoppers in Africa, is staggering.
And my frankly rather valiant attempts (if I do say so myself) to send Tweets and emails to the authors or publishers concerned tend to not get a reply. I’m fully aware that these restrictions are set by the publishers, and not by Amazon, so they’re off the hook on this one.
So what’s the solution? I am physically unable to give your publishing house money to purchase your book in electronic or audio format. You don’t reply when I ask that a plan is made, or even just explain the reasoning behind this oversight. That leaves just one option – pirating a copy of it from the web.
You got a better solution?
Side note: And it’s not just us whining here – many Australians seem to have the exact same problem. Way to go guys – you just made it impossible for TWO WHOLE CONTINENTS to give you money.
Hi Stu,
I thought I would respond to your rant, even if it is a little late. The reason why you can’t buy your e-book from Amazon is because they won’t have rights to sell the book in Africa. Perhaps when contracts were signed by the publishing house and the agent of the authors, they only signed over international rights. This means that if South Africa/Africa were to buy the rights to the e-book, you could buy it from local online resources. The best thing to do would be to research which publishing house in South Africa represents that book, and to contact their social media manager.
Regards,
Candice
Hi Candice. Thanks for the feedback.
Sure, I get the publishing workings as described in your post above. However, I feel that if the publisher and the author wish to maximise sales, it is in fact up to them to ensure that their work is available to as wide an audience as possible, and is thus available to as many customers as possible, in as many formats as possible. The onus shouldn’t be on the customer to battle to find the item if that can be at all avoided.
Long story short – I don’t HAVE to have these titles. I see the book I want and try to buy it. If it’s not available to buyers from Africa, I simply move on to the next item on my list. One x sale lost.