Just wanted to do a quick post about WHSmithE​books​.com which is pow­ered by Over­drive, Inc.. It’s a UK site that I browse reg­u­larly when I can’t find a dig­i­tal copy of an ebook in the US ebook­storeswhsmithebooks. And no, I don’t use nor buy Kin­dle ebooks because I find it akin to throw­ing my money away. Any­way, what books have I found there? Quite a few “must read” titles. The ques­tion is: why are these titles still not made avail­able to US etailers?

You can find Ali­son Goodman’s Rise of the Dragon Eye (Eon Series, Book 1) in Adobe ePub for­mat as well as Gracel­ing by Kristin Cashore.

If you enjoyed Eva Ibottson’s work, you can find what looks like all of her adult sto­ries (A Com­pany of Swans and The Morn­ing Gift) as well as her children’s sto­ries like Which Witch? avail­able dig­i­tally. Eliz­a­beth Chad­wick has a dig­i­tal cat­a­log of her his­tor­i­cal fic­tion listed as well but the street date of release is set for August 09. Unsure if her dig­i­tal cat­a­log will be avail­able to US read­ers via Fic­tion­wise or BooksOnBoard.

ePub can be read on your Sony Reader and just for com­ple­tion — on Stanza as well but in a non-secure for­mat. It’s my pre­ferred for­mat despite it’s flaws. All ebooks at WHSmith’s store are secured with barbed wire DRM and can only be read on applic­a­ble devices. I have noticed a pat­tern where ebooks that were not avail­able in the US were avail­able in ePub format.

Are you a fan of P.D. James? Val McDer­mid? Both authors have an exten­sive list of ebooks. As another reader stated and this is so true but ironic in that US read­ers have access to these ebooks in the UK but UK read­ers do not have the same access to US ebooks due to geo restric­tions. What is up with that?

Am not going to dis­cuss prices as each reader has his/her own bud­get and I know the prices are quite steep for some titles. In that case, why bother and get the print copy when it’s cheaper? What I will remark on is the func­tion­al­ity of the site. WHSmithE­books is not the eas­i­est site to nav­i­gate, unfor­tu­nately. No. Often just inputting the author’s name for a search doesn’t always bring back accu­rate results.

I don’t like the choices for search cri­te­ria: all, title, ISBN and cre­ator? Huh? Who searches by ISBN? I know I don’t. Also, tap­ping on Adobe ePub doesn’t give you a list of all ebooks in ePub, now what you will get is a long drawn out page explain­ing what ePub is and so on and so forth. But then as some­one will point out, just tap­ping on ebooks for Sony Reader will give you the results you’re after.

As a con­sumer, I am aware that there are copy­right restric­tions and author’s rights, etc that restrict acces­si­bil­ity of ebooks. What I don’t under­stand is why these restric­tions are still in place as more and more read­ers are turn­ing toward dig­i­tal books.

Just for the sake of trans­parency, I do not have affil­i­ate links with WHSmith’s ebook­store nor am I get­ting any type of kick­back for high­light­ing any of the titles posted. As a reader and ebook enthu­si­ast, I shop at this web­site and wanted to let other read­ers know about it as well (in case they didn’t).