Is ebooks.com working?

[profnachos]

Purchased a book from ebooks.com, got an confirmation email.

Logged on to download my book, but the link is bad. There is no file to be downloaded.

That was about 6 hours ago, and repeated emails have gone unanswered. The website does not have a phone number listed.


Has anyone been able to get anything from ebooks.com?

[montsnmags]

I think ebooks.com is an Australian (Western Australia) company, and so it may be that their support questions are answered here in Australia (though I do note they also have a US office).

As such, your "6 hours ago" would have placed the question in the middle of the night for a likely-unattended Western Australian support desk. I'm currently posting this at about 10.17am (eastern Australia time), and it's 8:17am in Western Australia at the moment.

[Edit: removal]

Cheers,
Marc

[Lemurion]

All I know is that even a reverse lookup on their address doesn't give a phone number you can tie to them. Having said that, 6 hours is a very short time for email response-- I would recommend waiting at least 24 hours for any sort of email response.

[montsnmags]

If you don't get any contact from them, I note the following contact numbers for Ebooks Corporation at their Ebook Library website:

http://www.eblib.com/contact.asp

Perth Office
Level 1
62 Bay View Terrace
Perth, WA 6010
AUSTRALIA
P:+61 (8) 9385 5851
F:+61 (8) 9385 5755

Melbourne Office
Level 2
21 Victoria Street
Melbourne, VIC 3000
AUSTRALIA
P:+61 (3) 9639 8430
F:+61 (3) 9923 6096

US Office
2505 SE 11th Ave, Suite 226
Portland, OR
97202
P:+1 503 473 8506
F:+1 240 235 7017

UK Office Third Floor
St. Thomas Court
Thomas Lane
Bristol BS1 6JG
United Kingdom


Note that these contact numbers and addresses specifically come from the Ebook Library website, linked to from Ebook Corporations contacts page:

http://www.ebookscorporation.com/ebooks_contact.html

who run/own ebooks.com.

However, you will also note that, though the Western Australia address is the same on both sites, the US address differs, and the others aren't shared on both sites, so I couldn't say what success you would have with any number other than the Western Australia one, which, assuming you're OS, you might not be prepared to call.

Like I suggested earlier, 6 hours is probably not long enough to wait when it was the middle of the night in the place the support desk may be located, but hopefully, since a full work day has now passed here in Oz, you have since received assistance from them.

Cheers,
Marc

[profnachos]

Thank you all.

My apologies to ebooks.com for making a baseless accusation which I have edited out from the opening post.

It turns out that the link to the book was "bad" because I had not activated my copy of Microsoft Reader. Why didn't the error message say so? But I am afraid that it is not because of ebooks' fault, but rather because of how MS Reader works.

I
Hate
Microsoft....

[montsnmags]

Originally Posted by profnachos

Thank you all.

My apologies to ebooks.com for making a baseless accusation which I have edited out from the opening post.
...

[Likewise, I've edited my first response to ensure your pre-edit is not deduced through implication. ]

Apologies and retractions are often a rare bird in internet forums - kudos. Don't sweat it too much though - these things can be very frustrating, so sometimes the request for help will inevitably and understandably come in the form of an "AAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!".

Of course, if you ever need to clear your head of the frustration before posing a question, there's always The Vent and Rant Thread to go to town on. It has helped many of us (often posting about stuff that has absolutely nothing to do with ebooks. ).

By the way, welcome to MR. Aside from the occasional descent into rhetorical barbarism, usually over DRM and copyright , I think you'll find we're mostly a pretty even-tempered lot, usually with solid empathy backed by experience and knowledge (or in my case, a willingness to just make stuff up so as to appear knowledgeable ).

Cheers,
Marc

[BrickyBrian]

I am dyslexic which might explain why when I'm reading a book and want to copy a sentence from it to my computer by the time I have moved my eyes from the book to the computer I have forgotten what I wanted to type.
As a result I cut and paste paragraphs from either an E-Book or scanned pages of a book and work from those deleting them afterwards.

I just attempted to copy a few lines from the opening of "Six minutes in May" which I bought from "eBooks.com and a message came up saying, "libro.eb20.net says,You have reached your copy quota, or the publisher of this text has not enabled copying for this title."

Is this a normal practice and is it possible to find out if an Ebook one wants to buy has that restriction?

[AnemicOak]

It's not an unheard of practice with books that have DRM (another reason to disinfect purchases). Some sites will list various restrictions, but I don't think they all do.

For example when I look at Stephen King's It on ebooks.com (your book doesn't appear to be available to me in the US) it says under Print & Copy Permissions...

Print & copy permissions

Printing
ePub off (no printing)

Online Reader 20% every 30 days


Copy/Paste
ePub off (no copying)

Online Reader 20% every 30 days

[BrickyBrian]

I don't remember seeing any mention of any of the points you mentioned and of course its difficult to contact most organisations selling on the Internet because they build their Web pages in a way that avoids human contact but I will certainly will look in future and even consider looking for software that allows one to ignore such restraints on trade.
Print & copy permissions
Printing ePub off (no printing)
Online Reader 20% every 30 days
Copy/Paste ePub off (no copying)
Many thanks.

[BrickyBrian]

I have not been using E-Books for very long starting with those from Amazon which were simple to download and even simpler to keep a record of. I then bought an E-Book of, “Six Minutes in May: How Churchill Unexpectedly Became Prime Minister” from ebooks.com, downloaded it and read the first page. I am now unable to find the E-Book on my computer. Does anyone understand what happened?