Sony Ereader WHOPPING price difference USA vs Here

deaglan1

Could anyone explain to me how it is that the Sony Touch Screen Ereader PRS600 is a whopping €269 here while in the good ol' USA it is now being offered by Amazon for $169???? And that being the case, is the machine the same and justs need a different power adapter or will a step down transformer allow it to be used here if purchased over there?

Absolutley Ridiculous Difference in Price.

Fat_Fingers

Same machine, only difference is charger. Sony and retailer here believe that consumers here are not sensitive to price or value for money as US consumers.

robinph

Don't think that they could even claim the charger as being different, as they don't supply one. You just get a USB cable.

There is no VAT/ sales tax included in the USD price, but it is still a big difference once you allow for that.

ROS123

Anyone know of a good source of books for Sony E-reader, any one I have looked at have an extremely limited selection. How does selection and cost compare to the Kindle?

Nononolan

waterstones website has a good catalogue of e books

robinph

WHSmiths should give basically the same selection as Waterstones, I think they are the same back end on the stores, but the prices might vary a bit between the two depending on if they are running offers or anything at the time.

Eoin

ROS123 wrote: »

Anyone know of a good source of books for Sony E-reader, any one I have looked at have an extremely limited selection. How does selection and cost compare to the Kindle?

I use booksonboard.com and diesel-ebooks.com. I've used an American billing address for both to give me a wider selection.

The latter can be a hit and miss, some awful stuff up there - but if you know what you're looking for, it's OK.

ROS123

The e-reader belongs to the other half, she generally reads thrillers, best seller types, Deaver, Reichs etc. Have only managed to purchase one book legally since last Christmas when it was bought as a present. I want to buy them but find the availability poor, and the cost high. I would prefer not to be messing around with USA addresses etc. as well. Why has it taken so long for this to take off. Will the Apple book store be compatible with the Sony e-reader, although the choice on there is awful, as far as I can see. Do you have to mess around with country of origin information on there as well.

Waterstones Jeffery Deaver The Burning Wire Paper Back £8.99 e-book £13.29 whats the deal with that, surely electronic is less cost.

airgeadlamh

ROS123 wrote: »

Waterstones Jeffery Deaver The Burning Wire Paper Back £8.99 e-book £13.29 whats the deal with that, surely electronic is less cost.

I've noticed that a few times on Waterstones. I e-mailed them about it yesterday and got this reply:
"
At present the majority of eBooks we sell have a DRM or Digital Rights Management scheme applied to them. This is not something that we have required but is something that publishers have chosen to use to protect the eBook from being shared or any publicity rights being broken. Based on this information the pricing for ebooks are set by the publishers and not waterstones.com.

We welcome any feedback on DRM from the customers and will happily pass it on to relevant publishers.

Thank you for your patience and please accept our apologies for any disappointment or inconvenience caused.
"
Not very helpful.

I e-mailed them back asking them to get on to the publisher; not holding my breath.

robinph

I guess they get a lot of annoyed emails about DRM though, so if they do actually pass those onto the publishers rather than /dev/null then it may eventually have an effect.

There are some legal DRM free stores about, but you'll not get the latest best sellers at those places.

watty

airgeadlamh wrote: »

At present the majority of eBooks we sell have a DRM or Digital Rights Management scheme applied to them. This is not something that we have required but is something that publishers have chosen to use to protect the eBook from being shared or any publicity rights being broken. Based on this information the pricing for ebooks are set by the publishers and not waterstones.com.

Those are two separate issues.
1) DRM. Should ensure title is cheaper as distribution is controlled.

2) Publisher setting high price on eBook version:

a) It's stupidity by publisher
b) Might be illegal for Publisher to set retail prices
c) Nothing to do with DRM.

You should point this out to Waterstones (now owned by HMV)

airgeadlamh

I told them:
- I did not see how DRM set the price
- that it was ridiculous to have the e-book version nearly twice as expensive as the paperback
-asked them to get on to the publisher about it.

It might be a better idea to get onto the author. It is potentially impacting the author's income.

Fat_Fingers

ROS123 wrote: »

Will the Apple book store be compatible with the Sony e-reader, although the choice on there is awful, as far as I can see. Do you have to mess around with country of origin information on there as well.

HA, that would be something... no way Apple will allow competitors products to their “walled garden” . Apple book store for Ireland is absolutely awful. Nothing there unless you are interested in Winnie the Pooh. Nothing there to buy , only selection of books that are 200 year old “classics”

watty

All the classics are free downloads. e.g. project Gutenberg. Out of copyright. On PC you can create PDF, mobibook or ePub etc and load them on anything. On my Archos 605 I experimented with Flash (Actions Script utilities), small HTML pages (DTP to HTML tool) with navigation and A6 PDFs (Open Office PDF creation) also.

robinph

watty wrote: »

All the classics are free downloads.

I believe Amazon allow you to pay for all those out of copyright books for downloading on the Kindle which is nice of them.