Black Library payment question

[JasonPratt]

Do they take blood or souls instead of British pounds?  >:D


Okay, seriously: I started reading the Horus Heresy series a few months back, bought Horus Rising and Descent of Angels in a couple of different physical formats (because the ebooks weren't the slightest bit less expensive); but then decided the portability of having ebooks was better even though not less expensive. So I bought another couple of prequels to HR, (Promethean Sun and Legion) as mobi formats, i.e. native to Kindle. (I think a new pre-HR book has been recently released, but in a special audio enhanced format thus only as an epub -- which might or might not work on old Kindles, I don't know.)

(That's a question, too, but not the main one.)

The main problem is that even though I must have bought those two ebooks somewhere, and I'm 99.99999% sure I remember buying them from the Black Library (which is the only place I know that sells the ebook formats), they don't take US cash anymore or convert the currencies. Or if they do, I don't know how to trigger that.

I can put the books in my cart, and sign in with my account, and do a few other things up to a point, but eventually the site says I can't buy the books because my credit card's billing address is in the US. It never gives me a chance to tell it I want to pay by Paypal instead of credit card.

I sent a tech support message to the BL a week or so ago, but haven't gotten a reply yet. So I thought I'd poll anyone here who uses them from the United States (or not-Britain maybe ;) ) to see if anyone has had a similar problem or knows how to trigger US currency on the site.

[Staggerwing]

Weird. Did you change the currency selector at the top of the page to US Dollars? I just used it to buy a $1.99 HH ebook with a US Card to test it. Now I have yet another thing to read ::)




Also, if you need to change the file format you can use a freeware program called Calibre to do so. It will even help load it onto your Kindle.

http://calibre-ebook.com/

[JasonPratt]

Well at least I'm not insane! -- I remembered that being there, but it utterly does not show up in my browser now. A perfectly blank white space, no drop tab or words or anything.

Now I'm wondering if I bought the books originally at the house (with a fully updated browser, not an old fan-update of Firefox meant for MacOS10.4.11) and transferred them to my Kindle from there. I don't remember doing so, but I don't remember a lot of things.  :))


Will Calibre change a file format that has embedded audio? -- because that seems to be the reason certain books aren't sold in mobi format only epub.

[Staggerwing]

What browser are you using? I'd try Chrome if you don't already have it installed.

AFA the audio, The only way to know is to try. IIRC, the audio won't play in Calibre's built in viewer under Windows but will under OSX and Linux. Hopefully it will play on the Kindle but to be safe you may want to use a Mac to do the conversion.

[JasonPratt]

Using Namoroka 3.6.28, a fan-built upgrade to the last Firefox version capable of running on MacOS 10.4.11. No one has updated even Namoroka in a while, so...

The office badly needs to switch to a new accounting system, which is the only reason why we have such old Macs (well, that and because with the new OS we'd have to rebuy all our software not just accounting -- might as well go to Windows in that case). When the accounting system blotches the parentals panic and try to look at a new system; when I get it working again the parents are like, "Whee! Never mind we can get back to this!"  ::) :P

Anyway, I meant to get the new books on my gaming system at home, but kept forgetting even though I'd remember at times I wasn't near the computer. 

[JasonPratt]

Okay, the tech guy wrote back in this morning and I think I've figured out the problem.

He sent me the link to the US currency page directly (where currency=2 as a toggle code after the web address), and there was the currency tab at the top of their header just like it used to be.

Last night though I had gone to the BL from the house to test whether a new browser worked, and of course it worked just fine -- BUT I noticed that the currency tab had been positioned much lower on their header.

From the evidence, what happened was that someone has made a code change to the main page of the Library, but not to the version of the page coded to read in US currency, the result being to push the currency tab so far vertically down the header that on older browsers the product tab line overlays it completely (probably under the "Warhammer" tab, though maybe the "Ebook" tab) making it impossible to see or even to operate.

Fortunately I know the workaround now; but I sent my experimental results back to the tech guy (who apologized for taking so long to return the email).