B&N ignoring foreign customer

[cacho]

Hi

I am from Spain. A couple of months ago I went to NYC and bought a Nook at 5th Av store. The employee was very friendly and told how amazing is Nook and the world that will open in front of my eyes by buying a lot of books in B&N.

As I am believer, I believe that guy, hence I trust in B&N.

When I started with my Nook I decided to buy a suscription of a US newspaper. I am not Spanish centered and like to check points of view from different places of the world. I have followed all the process till I received the message: "you must have a US address to buy this item".

Ok, I said to myself. Perhaps US news papers keep "secret classified information" that should not be checked by europeans. I thought that we are all together in NATO and other organizations but seems I am wrong...

Then, I decided to buy a magazine....but the same happened.

Ok, I will not give up. I have tried to buy a book for my son (I thought that no secret information should be there) but it was the same at the end.

Well, now I have a nice and useless Nook. I have money, I am honest and like to respect the law. I wasted a hundred of dollares for nothing... and B&N is forcing me to get content in a non legal way.

I wonder: if they can not/do not want to sell contents to foreign people, why they sell Nook to foreign people....

Javier

[RHWright]

Javier,

I feel for your frustrations. This has been a hot topic on the eBook discussion boards.

I'm not sure if the bookseller in question did not understand you would be taking the NOOK back to Spain and you did not have a US billing address to set up and purchase with before hand, whether they knew and didn't understand the NOOK well enough to know this was a problem, or if they intentionally misled you to make a sale. (If it's either of the last two, that's bad on B&N's part.)

To answer the bigger question, it's not some attempt to keep information out of foreign hands or an unwillingness to sell to foreign customers. B&N simply doesn't have the international rights to distribute the material. Publishing rights struggle under old, 20th century concepts of regional rights (even worse than DVDs). The industry is going through major pains to realign itself to a globalized, 21st century world.

I know that doesn't fix your situation, but I hope it begins to explain it.

As a side note, if you have a CC with a US billing address, you should be able to purchase content (including subscriptions) while you are here in the US and have it for your use when you are in Spain. Subscriptions, once paid, should continue to deliver as scheduled to your NOOK no matter where in the world you are, to my understanding.

Hope this helps somewhat.

[Psychee]

Cacho, I think the poster just before me has given you good information.  It makes perfect sense.  It's the same reason why I can't purchase a UK edition of Harry Potter from a store inside this country.  It all has to do with publishers' licenses and rights.

But just in case you still think that the US doesn't publish newspapers and magazines outside the US because they contain "secret information", I just want you to know that (1) such a policy would be unlawful and (2) our government has so many problems just trying to keep REAL secret information (like war reports) secret,  that the idea of them even trying to keep newspapers secret is pretty funny!