Lavengro

Renting ebooks and Amazon

Nobody loves Amazon. Nobody that is who tries to sell things through them or who has any dealings with them that go beyond simply clicking to buy a cheap book or whatever, and with the latest revelations about amazon.co.uk’s offshore VAT dealings their customer base must be becoming rather disillusioned too.

So, a story like this on Boing Boing will do nothing to help Amazon’s reputation:

According to Martin Bekkelund, a Norwegian Amazon customer identified only as Linn had her Kindle access revoked without warning or explanation. Her account was closed, and her Kindle was remotely wiped. Bekkelund has posted a string of emails that he says were sent to Linn by the company. They are a sort of Kafkaesque dumbshow of bureaucratic non-answering, culminating in the customer service version of “Die in a fire,” to whit, “We wish you luck in locating a retailer better able to meet your needs and will not be able to offer any additional insight or action on these matters,” a comment signed by “Michael Murphy, Executive Customer Relations, Amazon.co.uk.”

The Economist has picked the story up as well and discusses the point that people do not actually own the books that they have bought.

… this lack of awareness of the legal terms-of-use is largely the fault of the e-book sellers. Their websites talk of “buying” books as if the digital transaction is exactly the same as one in a bookshop. And the explanation that customers are, in effect, merely “renting” their e-books is buried in long, jargon-filled license agreements that almost nobody reads.

What you buy from Amazon, or of course from Lavengro Books as well, is not an ebook but the right to use that ebook. It cannot be otherwise if copyright is to be protected. While there certainly are some people who photocopy whole paper books, the effort involved in doing so and the inherent loss of quality make it unattractive as an operation to perform on a large scale. But ebooks are different: any number of perfect copies of a computer file can be made with no effort at all. That is why DRM has to be used and why people who have downloaded ebooks onto their Kindle or other reader do not actually own them. Ownership implies freedom of use and disposal, which in this case is incompatible with the protection of intellectual property rights. The same applies to music that is downloaded from iTunes for example.

Naturally, I support this state of affairs. I admit that the word ‘buy’ is not ideal in this context. It is used on the Lavengro Books website, but the buttons that say ‘Buy this book’ lead to an external website, which is totally independent of Lavengro Books, which quite clearly asks the purchaser to buy the book. Perhaps with time the situation regarding the status of downloaded ebooks will become clearer and people will understand that ebooks are no more owned than is computer software and for the same reason: to prevent piracy.

But that does not in any way excuse Amazon’s disastrous customer relations. It seems – and nothing more precise can be said because Amazon has refused to explain – that this unfortunate Norwegian woman’s offence was to use the address of a friend in the UK so that she could buy books from amazon.co.uk while living in Norway, where Amazon does not have a local operation, thereby contravening the small print of the Kindle contract.

And remotely wiping her Kindle for that reason without warning or explanation is not just rude. It’s stupid.

Amazon and ebooks

The other day I wrote about Amazon charging UK customers 20% VAT on ebooks while using its base in Luxembourg to pay only 3% itself. Now the European Commission has taken action:

The Guardian:

The European commission – which oversees European Union law as the EU's executive arm – on Wednesday gave Luxembourg 30 days to increase its VAT rate on digital services from 3% to 15%. This will close a tax loophole that has encouraged companies such as Amazon, Skype and Netflix to be based in Luxembourg to benefit from the 3% rate when selling throughout the EU. Luxembourg must agree to change its VAT rate before the end of November, or face being referred to the European court of justice and risk fines. France has also been issued with a similar warning over its 7% rate for digital services.

However,

Amazon is expected to contest the commission ruling, so there will be no immediate impact on the cost of ebooks bought from its UK website.

Monday eGELU: armistice poppies

This screenshot is from the ebook of Peter Harvey’s A Guide to English Language Usage. It is viewed in  Adobe Digital Editions, a free reader that is required to read the ebook. When ADE is installed and registered the book can be read on any registered device. On the left is a list of contents with clickable links, and the hyperlinks in the text act as cross references.

For an explanation of the phonetic symbols used in Lavengro Books ebooks, and of the reason for using them, click here.

To buy books click here.

Lavengro Books: www.lavengrobooks.com

 

 

 

‘If not’ is ambiguous

Some years ago a friend sent me a copy of a book that he had had a hand in writing. It was about a subject (not the English language) in which I had some good knowledge and I made a few suggestions for the next edition. As one might expect, the reactions to my various points varied from sincere thanks to polite disagreement. But there was one exception; I suggested that the use of ‘if not’ might be ambiguous and should be changed. Good heavens! I might as well have suggested that the author use ‘gonna’ and ‘wanna’ for ‘going to’ and ‘want to’. And that despite the fact that in other circumstance people recognise my professionalism and actually pay me good money to correct their use of English.

That event stuck in my mind so it was with great relief that I read this article in the Economist. Johnson offers the sentence:

I'm a good tennis player, if not a great one.

and reports that in an admittedly small sample 44 people thought that the default interpretation was

(a) I'm a good tennis player, and may even be a great one.

while 17 thought it meant

(b) I'm a good tennis player, though not a great one.

Vindication! That’s good enough for me. Myself, I never use the phrase and see no reason why I (or anyone else) should want to do so when perfectly good non-ambiguous paraphrases are available.

Thursday GEM: A, a and an

This screenshot is from Great English Mistakes made by Spanish speakers.

To buy books click here.

Lavengro Books: www.lavengrobooks.com

Indiana Jones with software

The BBC reports that sophisticated computer software is being used in an attempt to decipher proto-Elamite, a language that was spoken and written 5,000 years ago in what is now south-western Iran.

Experts working on proto-Elamite hope they are on the point of 'a breakthrough'

The world's oldest undeciphered writing system, which has so far defied attempts to uncover its 5,000-year-old secrets, could be about to be decoded by Oxford University academics.

There is more on Wikipedia about the language and about the Elamites themselves.

Map showing the area of the Elamite Empire (in red) and the neighbouring areas. The approximate Bronze Age extension of the Persian Gulf is shown.

Selling ebooks on Amazon

According to a Guardian report amazon.co.uk is charging the British VAT rate of 20% on the ebooks it sells while paying only 3% to the government of Luxembourg, where it is based. I know that the VAT rules for intracommunity transactions are quite horrendously complicated and I make no comment on then legality of that state of affairs. But the point is that that difference in VAT rates is being paid by publishers.

[Amazon’s] base in Luxembourg allows it to benefit from a European tax anomaly and pay only 3% VAT on digital books sold to UK readers. Subsequently, Amazon charges the difference between the UK VAT levy imposed on publishers and the actual 3% that it pays, which amounts to an extra £1.38 of profit every time it sells a £10 ebook in this country. It then negotiates further substantial discounts on top of the VAT subsidy, which in some cases can result in publishers receiving less than 10% of the price paid by the online customer.

I have not published Kindle editions of my books and have no plans to do so due to the impossibility of converting the layout of tables among other technical problems. I did deal with amazon.co.uk myself at one time for my paper books and found it a difficult and expensive experience as I had to post individual books from Spain. Even in the EU international postage is expensive and the sale price had to be ridiculous for me to break even. Now this is done directly by the print-on-demand printers, who pay me 25% of the Spanish catalogue price for every book sold on Amazon. They also sell my ebooks (epub format), giving me 75% of the Spanish price for books they sell directly and 55% for books sold through affiliated booksellers, including some in Latin America.

Monday GELU: flags, flammable

Today we look at the print edition of A Guide to English Language Usage. Here is the end of the article on flags and a seemingly small but potentially important point about flammable.

To buy books click here.

Lavengro Books: www.lavengrobooks.com

Friday eGEM: b and v

This screenshot is from the ebook of Great English Mistakes made by Spanish speakers. It is viewed in Adobe Digital Editions, a free reader that is required to read the ebook. When ADE is installed and registered the book can be read on any registered device. On the left is a list of contents with clickable links, and the hyperlinks in the text act as cross references.

For an explanation of the phonetic symbols used in Lavengro Books ebooks, and of the reason for using them, click here.

To buy books click here.

Lavengro Books: www.lavengrobooks.com

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