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Dymocks secretly sells seven e-readers

You might recall that last week Dymocks announced they were adding support for Epub and DNL formats.  One comment I made was that I was surprised (at this late date) Dymocks was still selling the Iliad as their only ereader. It turns out I was wrong.

Dymocks sent a PDF to Gizmodo AU that shows the other 6 ereaders that they sell. Guess what? They’re not listed on Dymocks' website. I’m not surprised, really. The Iliad isn’t there either!

No, wait. I just found some pages through Google. The pages for the Eco Reader, Irex DR1000s, Bookeen Cybook, Hanlin V3, and Bebook One exist, but they appear to be orphans. I can’t find any link to those pages on the Dymocks site itself. (and searching Dymocks for variations of "ereader" doesn’t work.) And I just discovered that Dymocks has been selling the Bebook Neo since mid-March. But they’re only sold at the one store in Sydney. WTF?!?

And do you know what’s really strange (I’m talking Dymocksian level of nuttiness)? The Bookeen Cybook, Irex DR1000s, and Hanlin V3 aren’t listed on the PDF, and I only accidentally found through Google. Not only does Dymocks hide the product pages on their website, these 3 models aren’t carried in that one store!

I can take this one step further into the Dymocks Zone. If you look at the PDF, you’ll see that none of the devices support Mobipocket DRM, Adobe Reader DRM or MSReader DRM, which were the only DRM formats sold by Dymocks before last week.  My point: Dymocks were selling ereaders that cannot work with the ebooks Dymocks were selling.

I have to stop here. My brain just melted.

Dymocks_Selection_eReaders (PDF)

Update: Someone pointed out the the Bebook One originally supported Mobipocket DRM. Yes, it did. But it’s listed as supporting Adobe DE DRM, so my statement is still mostly correct.  The DRM support changed with a firmware update, and there is no sign that Dymocks sold the Bebook with the older firmware.

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Comments


Luca May 12, 2010 um 2:00 am

Yeah I agree I think your brain has melted buddy, how about you check your facts before you continue degrading the chances of your three readers returning to this useless source of information.

You wrote: "If you look at the PDF, you’ll see that none of the devices support Mobipocket DRM, which was the only DRM format sold by Dymocks before last week". This is spectacularly incorrect as the dymocks website has been selling .PRC (that’s the Mobipocket file extension if you dont know); MS LIT and ADE content since ohhhhh about November 15 2007.

And again you wrote: "My point: Dymocks were selling e-readers that cannot work with the ebooks Dymocks were selling." Ummm, did you bother to read the flyer…4 of the 6 ereaders in the flyer support MOBI. That’s the bit under "Supported File Formats".

As your website forum is probably moderated I dont expect to see my comments on this site by tomorrow (you need to protect your own self image I understand)….but dont worry I will reference your article within my own blog and republish it for the next couple of months so it washes thru Google’s indexes for atleast the next 6 months….say goodbye to your 3 readers.

Nate the great May 12, 2010 um 8:38 am

My sentence structure was a little awkward, but it was fundamentally correct. Please read it again.
The e-reader listed on that PDF do not support Mobipocket DRM, and cannot read the Mobipocket ebooks sold by Dymocks.


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