For a while, I wanted to read the book "The Spirit Level" by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. But this blog entry is not about this book (I haven't read it yet). Since a while, I have such a nice ebook-reader (well, it's not that nice, read my older blogpost about it, but that's not my point here). I really hate it to carry around kilos of books and I also hate it to decide which books to take with me, so for the first time I tried to actually buy an ebook.
I found that penguin has this book. The price is 9,99 £ - interesting enough, the price for the paper variant is 7,99 £. Bits must be really expensive these days. Anyway, I thought 9,99 £ is still a price I was willing to pay, so I clicked on buying, created an account and so on. I was a bit confused when they asked me for the delivery adress, but hey, I don't mind. At the end, they told me that this book is not available for customers outside the UK.
I mean... it's hard for me to comment on that. How stupid is that? I really don't want to know the strange reason that might have be (I'm pretty sure it has something to do with international copyright law and collecting societies that are unable to arrive in the time of the internet, but I FUCKING DON'T CARE, I JUST WANT TO BUY A BOOK).
So I tried it further. Amazon has the book, but only for it's own ebook reader, the Kindle. All german bookstores I found only have the book on paper.
So - I still don't have the book. I could buy it on paper - but seriously, I don't want that. I bought an ebook-reader recently because I thought this gives me the freedom to read alternately in several books without carrying them around. I thought the time has come for that.
Maybe it's just that simple: The book publishing industry will have to die - just like the music industry, which sadly still refuses to do that finally.

(sidenote: I found that someone experienced nearly the same story - with the same book - and I even know that person. That happened purely by chance.)