So, if I have the choice between:
-item 1: ebook for the Kindle, 7 euros. DRM-protected, MOBI format , found only after extensive search (amazon turned out to be the only seller I’ve found which would take my French money for this particular ebook). Can be lent to friends exactly once in the entire lifetime of the book. And, of course, my ebook reader doesn’t read MOBI, so we’re looking at cracking the DRM on my own ebook and converting it to epub via Calibre, probably losing a lot in the process (and, er, not exactly doing legal things, even though I wouldn’t be distributing the de-DRMed ebook).

-item 2: physical book. 5.50 euros including P&P. Fully owned by yours truly, lendable to whom I feel like it, as many times as possible. Can be dropped in the bath, lost in transit, etc.

What on earth makes you think I’m going to pick item 1 over item 2, exactly?

(yes, I know, item 1 takes up less space. But also can be lost when my hard disk crashes)

In other, less ranty news, I am now a proud subscriber to the digital edition of Locus, and it rocks. No more waiting a full month to get it, no more lost issues–and way cheaper than the international subscription for something I don’t keep around anyway (and before you ask, it comes in epub format, without DRM).

So, apparently there’s a series of books about Genghis Khan and his descendants, written by Conn Iggulden . The first book was released in the UK as Wolf of the Plains, which is nicely evocative.

In America, they’ve titled it Genghis: Birth of an Empire. Just, you know, in case you don’t get it’s about Genghis Khan, or if you don’t have a clue who this guy named Genghis Khan was and that he would later rule one of the greatest empires in the world…

*headdesk*

…if you’re going to put foreign words into an English book/movie/etc., can you please make sure the aforementioned foreign words are actually part of the language you’re purporting to transcribe?

Because, let me tell you, reading or hearing French that fails to take into account the most basic grammar (as in, gender of words and/or article use) doesn’t fill me with glee and enthusiasm.

(we can then move on to poor word choices, but I’m willing to cut a little more slack here, even though those things tend to sound like nothing a Frenchman would ever say).

Current mood:

cranky

So we’re watching Farscape season 4, which definitely has its ups and downs–and we’d be more in the downs right now. Among my (many) sources of irritation is the way Crichton refers to the child Aeryn is carrying as “my child, my DNA”–which is so darn utterly selfish.

Why on earth is it so difficult to acknowledge that the being in Aeryn’s womb belongs to both of them?

And it’s struck me, even as I was ranting against this, that there are an awful lot of series/movies which feature precisely that trope: the male character finds out he’s going to be a dad, and runs after the woman while continuously referring to the future child as his and his only. Way to respect the mother, dude.

Current mood:

angry

Well, more like a rant… Loved episode 1 to bits, but in general I have the feeling this episode was a little under par. Also, it had a number of massive issues around its depictions of Chinese–the sheer number of movies featuring a powerful Chinese sect (somewhat Triad-like) is really annoying, and it’s a shame this episode doesn’t buck the trend. Let’s not even mention the clichés of the Chinese girl obsessed with the tea ceremony or the eeevil Triad (sorry, sect) pillaging the riches of its own country. Yeah, right.

I have the same problem with the Triads intruding in the UK as I have with the Russian mafia or the Colombian drug-lords in thrillers: behind a premise like that, there’s a strong subtext of “oh, we were doing fine until those *people* started bringing their own criminality over. Really, all British citizens are fine. It’s just foreigners who bring their dirty laundry”. And I thought it was particularly noticeable in that episode, especially given the poor characterisation of the Chinese.

And for once, Sherlock is painfully slow on the uptake–I don’t know any Chinese, but my first reflex on seeing those symbols would have been “some Asian language, probably derived from Chinese” (yes, they’re numbers from an obsolete system, but some of the signs, like the “one” sign, definitely have a familiar component…).

Oh, and yeah–the big bad General Shan looked about as Chinese as me or you. I could be wrong, but I’d have pegged her as some kind of South-East Asian (Thai or Vietnamese, I think, but I can’t find the actress’ name to check). Kind of undercut her seriousness as the top person of the eeevil Chinese sect.

Ok, so apparently the reason [1] I can buy physical books from, say, waterstones.co.uk, and not ebooks is because, when I buy physical books, the place of sales is Waterstone’s servers (ie in the UK), and they then ship it to me (incurring import taxes and whatnot). When I buy ebooks, the place of purchase is my computer–which is firmly in France, where Waterstone’s isn’t licensed to sell English books per their agreement with the publishers. But of course, no one but the UK resellers are authorised to sell UK editions…

*goes bang head against wall*

Why am I suddenly reminded of Kafka here?

[1]I have no idea whether it’s true, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

To whom it may concern:

I have an ebook reader (the bebook mini), and I find it comfortable and convenient. I embrace the digital revolution, and would gladly buy most of my books in eformat and save myself bookshelf space.

Except…

Have I mentioned the term “geo-restrictions” yet? The little thing that means places like WHSmith, Waterstone, the Sony Store or Amazon won’t sell me anything but their “authorised” catalog (ie, appropriate to the country I’m in)?

The official argument is something like “wait for the publisher to release the book in your country”. Well, guess what. My country is France. The ebook I want is in English (or Spanish. Or Vietnamese. Or whatever). Chances of the ebook being released in my country in that language? Close to nil, the market is too small for most SF/F books.

So, I have two choices. I can fake a US/UK IP address and a US/UK credit card to buy where I want; or I can pirate the book. None of them are really legal; and one of them involves way too much hassle for what should be a legit purchase (while actually leaving me still open to prosecution for fraud). I’ll leave you to contemplate what I’m most likely to do on the day I lose patience with the system…

In the meantime, I buy legit books at Baen’s webscriptions; I admire my publisher at Angry Robot, who sell DRM-free worldwide books for a reasonable price.

PS: and yes, as a writer, I know it’s a rights problem. But, quite frankly, as a customer, I still think it borders on the insane. Cracking down on people who buy English books from non-English countries is tantamount to pushing people into the arms of pirates, as far as I’m concerned.
PPS: if there’s a source of non-geo-restricted legit SF/F books I’ve missed, I’d be glad to be pointed in the right direction.

So, I ordered 6 seasons of Buffy recently, from a Spanish vendor. That was about a month ago. When nothing showed up, I finally contacted the distributor, who sent me the tracking number for the package.

Insofar as I can determine from correos.es, the itinerary went something like this: package left Spain, package went to France, some attempts were made to distribute it (which quite patently failed, since I never actually received it or any message telling me to drop by the post office); and in the absence of any life sign from my part, package went back to Spain. It’s now going back to France for another merry-go-round, insofar as I can tell…

Careful reading of posts which featured people in similar situation unearthed the logic, which goes something like this: the post office provides tracking numbers, therefore you should log in every morning to check where your package is, and nip into the post office to get it if you see it’s there. Last time I tried this, I positively had to seduce the postman to convince him to look into all the packages, since your average French post office sorts packages by day of arrival and not by numbers. Here’s to hoping the situation has changed.

Let’s not even get into the fact that the package doesn’t have an approved French tracking number and thus doesn’t seem to be in the French system at all…

*head-desk*
(though I’m really thankful the distributor paid that little extra for a tracked package, otherwise we’d both be wondering what the blazes had happened)

Well, two rants, actually. It’s been a bemusing kind of day.

Resolutely failed to buy the Lymond chronicles in ebook format (I have the paper editions but wanted to have them handy for, say, holidays). However, my purse balked at paying ten freaking pounds per book for something I essentially already own in another format. (it occurred to me that for the price of three ebooks, I can buy a 16GB card, too. No comments necessary).

And if I see one more American remake of a successful other-language movie, under the pretext that Americans are too bemused to handle dubs or (Heaven forbid) subtitles, I’ll hit something. Hard, and with a spiked iron gauntlet. (this brought to you courtesy of Let Me In and The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo).

There’s something I particularly hate about large supermarkets in France (I don’t remember this in the UK, and I’ve never been in a US supermarket for long enough, so I wouldn’t know how common it is): there’s a guy with a microphone speaking over the sound system, detailing the deals for the day and where you can find them (“if you don’t hurry they’ll be gone” and that kind of thing). In between the bouts of publicity, they put music, but not the unobtrusive, relaxing kind–rather the peppy kind of music that makes my teeth grind.

It’s cheap, it’s tacky, and it’s a really unpleasant background to have when you’re shopping.

Well, they’ve installed the same thing in our town centre: it broadcasts over the entire shopping area. It’s already quite annoying as it is–but one of the loudspeakers happens to be over the entrance to our building. Net result: we get the sound in the morning, and as a background all day.

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