Comments on: Amazon and B&N don’t love Canada—but oh how Sony’s e-book side does!

By: asphalt

asphalt — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 19:42:10 +0000

Sony *loves* Canada, because it can. Sony’s an electronics manufacturer, not a publisher; and they are not the primary content provider for the device. Until the Kindle became a threat, the Reader was the red-headed stepchild of Sony Corp. — it was practically impossible to find on their Website, and I had to deduce on my own that that *electronic* device wasn’t freaking *searchable across titles*. (Near-complete absence of reference titles from their bookstore.) Sony let Amazon do its homework on how people read and what the reading public really demands from an electronic reading device.

Yet — I am deeply grateful to Sony for being first. I don’t even want to think about where we’d be now if they hadn’t taken a pretty big risk and started the ball rolling. And now, *finally*, I can almost say that I do love Sony — because of the PRS-600, which finally has what are for me the most important functions. I’m in the U.S., and a preeetty happy Kindle 2 owner. But the second e-ink device in the house really *could* be a Sony.

Especially since Sony and Germany appear to love each other as much as Sony and Canada. I would (apparently) be able to download ePub titles for the Sony from a Web retailer there. (I don’t know why not. They’ve never minded sending me print.) Oh. And there’s that pdf thing, too, that Sony purportedly does and the Kindle emphatically does *not*…

By: Mike Scott

Mike Scott — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 16:27:13 +0000

If you figure that $400 is probably 70 or so books, let’s suppose that it will cost the publisher of each of those books $20,000 to acquire the UK rights. So they’re giving up $400 to avoid spending $1.4 million, which doesn’t sound like such a bad deal. It will take legislative action to fix this; there need to be no such thing as electronic rights that can be sub-divided geographically.

By: Mark

Mark — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 15:58:27 +0000

I couldn’t help laugh about the comment re Quebec. I can only assume the draconian language laws were a big factor in shutting out the Quebecois.

By: Devini

Devini — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 14:49:10 +0000

Here’s hoping next month Sony, Amazon and B&N introduce 3G versions of their respective readers into Canada once Bell &c. start up their new systems. Hope springs eternal …

By: J.M. Skillman

J.M. Skillman — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 13:41:53 +0000

SONY loves Canada because it was a Canadian who first took a chance on importing their small transistor radio. I was very surprised when the first eBooks were not available here at the same time, or even before they were released elsewhere.

By: Bob W

Bob W — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 13:02:43 +0000

Keep in mind that Sony was the first in the market and they introduced in the USA before Canada as well. The original PRS-500 was introduced in the USA Sept 2006 and was never made available in Canada. The PRS-505 was introduced in the USA in Oct 2007 and wasn’t made available in Canada until April 2008 (and for some bizarre reason they excluded Quebec).

Both the Amazon and B&N offerings bundle wireless bookstore access and I suspect that this is the largest barrier to entry in Canada. We have one of the highest cost wireless services in the world and they probably aren’t able to make a deal with the wireless companies like they can in other countries.

Also note that the Sony PRS-900 release indicated it wouldn’t be available in Canada either. I suspect Sony is running into the same difficulty as Amazon.

By: Steve Jordan

Steve Jordan — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 12:29:06 +0000

Well, that’s what companies are supposed to do, to make happy customers. It’s nice to know some companies out there still get it.

Not surprising, since Amazon is a web-based reseller, and B&N is a publishing reseller, that they are out of touch with everything except their bottom lines…