Gardners ebooks frequently asked questions

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1 How does the web service work? The technical process is covered in our I24 ebook Ordering via Web Services.pdf which explains all the web service file layout and method. It is recommended that you read the document before proceeding or have the document to hand as reference prior to continuation. Note: Please ignore page 11 of the I24 ebook Ordering document that refers to the WSTEST login as this login is no longer valid. How can I start placing test orders? You will require a unique login before you can start testing. Please contact gsupport@gardners.com quoting your account number and requesting an ebook web service account to be set up. Please allow up to 7 days for this to be made available. The web service ordering process is as follows: Stage 1 placing the order: 1) You place an order for an ebook using a unique login (EBookOrderMsg). 2) A reply is automatically generated confirming if the order has been successfully placed (EBookOrderReply). 3) A copy of the required ebook is DRM protected and made available for download. The URL link to the download is put in a web service queue. Stage 2 collecting the ebook link: 4) You connect into the web service (EBookDownloadMsg) and collect any available URL link (EBookDownloadReply). Each link will contain your original order reference so that you can uniquely identify it. 5) You the URL link to your customer. If multiple orders are placed, how do I know that the downloaded ebook link corresponds to the first order placed? The reply URL (EBookDownloadReply) is not sequential. Therefore you must make sure that you use the UniqueRef when placing an order so that when you collect the EBookDownloadReply you can match the UniqueRef in the response to your originally placed order. How often should I check for a URL link? Providing you have placed an order successfully without any initial error responses being received, you should be able to collect the EBookDownloadReply within 2000 to 5000 milliseconds. However if a response is not received you can continue polling every couple of seconds until a response is received. You should only be polling if you have placed an order but not collected a corresponding EBookDownloadReply for it. If there is a problem with the order just placed, how will I know? When the initial order is placed we check to see that the log in credentials are correct and the relevant back end services are available to receive your order. We then respond using the EBookOrderReply. Providing the above was successful we then submit your order to our ebook ordering system. Any failure of the order will be shown in the EBoookDownloadReply as an ErrorCode and ErrorDesc message. You should pragmatically check for any error messages and deal with them accordingly. All successfully placed orders will be charged and refunds cannot be offered, so you should not resend any orders unless you know that they have failed as all additional copies of ebooks ordered will be charged regardless of whether they are downloaded or not. How do Gardners prevent the ebook being copied to another computer? All ebooks are Digital Rights Management (DRM) wrapped before being dispatched to the customer. This basically means that there are some low level security controls built into the downloaded file to prevent copyright infringements such as excessive copying, and excessive printing. Page 1 of 7

2 What is Adobe Digital Editions (ADE)? This is a free program that can be installed on your PC or MAC to allow you to manage your ebooks. ADE is like a virtual bookcase where you can create new book shelves to arrange your ebook library. From this program you can add, remove and re-sort books, also you will need this program to be able to transfer books from your desktop to your portable ereader. In order to transfer books between devices make sure your ADE is authorized with an Adobe ID before any DRM wrapped books are added to your library. For further information please visit Adobe Digital Editions help page How many times can the ebook be downloaded? The download link can only be used successfully three times. Once this limit has been reached the ebook cannot be downloaded again. It is envisaged that this is more than generous, and will permit users to redownload an ebook in the event of the loss of data from their device or pc. After that, they will be expected to purchase the product again. Does the URL link ever expire? Not by date. It only expires when all the allowable downloads have been used up. What happens if my customer loses the URL link? If the link is lost we can supply the link to you providing the ISBN and Order reference have been supplied. Please note that we as a wholesaler will not contact your customer directly but would supply the link in a text file to you via . However if the original link is showing as the order having been already successfully downloaded the maximum allowable number of times, then the customer will need to purchase the item again. Suppose the customer orders the wrong ebook, can I get it refunded? All ebooks are firm sale so you will be billed once the order has been dispatched. If you choose to refund your customer this is your choice but the order will not be refunded by us. What happens if my customer s computer fails, will all their ebooks be lost? EBooks like all other data are the responsibility of the user to make sure they have put in place procedures to back up data on a regular basis. As long as the user has registered ADE at install and kept a note of the Adobe ID they were issued with, they will be able to copy the ebooks onto their new PC and access them. If they failed to back the files up then those books will be lost, although they can use any remaining downloads from the download URL. If they did back up their ebooks, but did not register the ADE prior to their original download, then the ebooks will be tied to the old PC and will not work on the new PC. We strongly recommend that you make it very clear in your terms of business with your customer, their responsibilities and to read Adobe Digital Editions Frequently Asked Questions, to avoid any disappointment at a future date. What is the availability on ebooks? The availability of an ebook is similar in some ways to the physical book, although not subject to reprints the publisher can still remove it from sale and restrict it for sale to and from certain regions. Therefore even though an ebook has been published it can on occasion still be unavailable. If an ebook order cannot be fulfilled it will not be backordered so the order will be cleared down and will need to be ordered again. What formats of ebooks do Gardners supply? Our current ebook Catalogue allows your customer to purchase and download titles as either epub or the Pdf, both formats can be viewed in Adobe Digital Editions and on a wide range of ereader devices. We also have a range of MP3 audio titles that can be downloaded. How many ebook readers can have a copy of the same ebook on them at the same time? When using Adobe Digital Editions a DRM wrapped title can be copied between up to six support mobile devices, providing all devices are using the same Adobe ID. Page 2 of 7

3 Will the ebooks work on Apple products? Our ebooks will not work natively on the ipad, iphone and ipod devices. However there are many 3rd party software products that will enable the customer to use the Adobe DRM protected ebook on their Apple devices. We recommend BlueFire (available for download from the Apple istore) but others are available. We cannot offer any support for the ereader software so any ebooks purchased by your customers to work on these devices will be entirely at their own risk. What is an Agency ebook? Many publishers will not allow the purchase of ebooks from a retailer until an agreement has been signed by the retailer accepting the publishers terms. The agreements will cover a range of territories so that any retailer within that territory who wishes to sell an Agency ebook, or a retailer wishing to sell an Agency ebook into that territory, must be authorised by the publisher to do so, before Gardners can facilitate the supply of the ebook. Terms of sale will be that you can only charge a set price, in a set currency to your customer and in turn you will receive a commission for the sale. Where currency has been stipulated, Gardners will process all financial transactions in that currency with you. All rules, regulations and pricing agreements set out by the publisher are outside of Gardners control. Applications for Agency ebook agreements can be requested through your Gardners sales representative or by ing sales@gardners.com and requesting applications to sell Agency ebooks. There is no charge for this. What ebook data do Gardners offer for me to use on my website? We offer a variety of data to be used on websites by our customers. Please see below for a description. All data feeds are subject to an annual charge + VAT. Prices are detailed in the I1 ecommerce Data Services Licence Agreement.pdf which will need to be signed, returned and paid before access to the data is issue. Page 3 of 7

4 Ebook data feeds Bibliographic data Weekly updated - collected via FTP download. The file format is in XML and contains all the ebook Bibliographic information. There are two versions of the data: GardnersEBook.xml = complete data NAGardnersEBook.xml = complete data excluding Agency titles. Note: The prices shown in the data are in Pounds Sterling (GBP), if however you are selling Agency ebooks as well, then you should only use ebook Price and Availability for all pricing following the below Price and Availability file guidelines. Full details of the file layout are covered in the I23 Electronic Books - Bibliographic Data Guide.PDF Jacket images The initial full set of jacket images are supplied on DVD by postal service. This will contain all the required Jpeg files to date. The naming convention is ISBN13.jpg You will also be provided with a unique login to the jacket image server when you subscribe to ebook bibliographic data. All further updates of jacket images must be collected electronically by selecting the relevant Week update from within the Update directory and downloading all the files contained within. The folder layout: Ebooks (main directory) Complete (the complete catalogue of jacket images) (first 8 numbers of the EAN) jpg (ebook jacket image EAN.jpg) jpg jpg GT (Gardners test folder please ignore) Update (the weekly update folders) Week26 (calendar week that the jacket images were added) (first 8 numbers if the EAN) jpg (ebook jacket image EAN.jpg) Week27 Week28 ImagesList.TXT - List of this week's new and updated jacket images and the date they were originally added File layout: eisbn,date Added (file header) ,07/12/2009 (EAN, date added as DD/MM/YYYY) ,07/12/2009 Page 4 of 7

5 Price and Availability file Daily updated - collected via FTP download. We produce three daily files each with the same name but with different file suffixes. The content of each is the same but are aimed at different business requirements. The three file types are: TXT = the complete ebook catalogue PAF = catalogue excluding any Agency agreement titles LPA = This is for Libraries only and not to be used by retailers. The file naming convention is DDMMYYYY and will have an accompanying file named.done to denote that the file is available for collection. So a file created for the 5 th of October 2010 would be called TXT and will only be available for download when the file TXT.DONE is also listed in the folder. The file shows information in the following CSV file format: EAN,FORMAT,RRP,DISCOUNT,ACTIVE,AGENCY,AGENCY_GBP,AGENCY_EURO The file has multiple purposes. Firstly to clarify if an item is sellable or not, by using the ACTIVE flag. 1=sellable, 0=not available for sale. Secondly to show if the item is and Agency agreement ebook (AGENCY flag set to Y or N) or not. If the AGENCY flag is set to N then you can sell the item at any price you wish using the RRP (this is shown in Pounds Sterling ) as a guide and then applying the DISCOUNT percentage off of the RRP field to know how much you will pay for the item. If the AGENCY flag is set to Y and the country you are selling to is within the territories covered by the agency agreement then you must charge your customer for the ebook in the currency of your country if it is listed in data feed. The price you must charge will be shown in the currency indicated by the column header AGENCY_currency (where currency is replaced by GBP, EURO e.t.c). So if your business is based in a Euro zone country you would use AGENCY_EURO to invoice your customer at the listed EURO amount and you would be invoiced by us in EUROs less your commission %. Note: If Agency price is not listed in the currency of your country then we will not be able to supply this Agency ebook * If the AGENCY flag is set to Y and your business is outside of the territories covered by the agency agreement but your customer is located in one of the territories covered by the agency agreement you would use the AGENCY GBP field. If the AGENCY flag is set to Y and your business is outside of the territories covered by the agency agreement and your customer is located outside of the territories covered by the agency agreement you would use the normal RRP and DISCOUNT fields. Please see our Agency Title Flow diagram.pdf for a visual guide of the above. * Important: From time to time an Agency Publisher will supply us with an ebook but will not provide the full pricing information. This omission could cause your ebook order to fail with an Error: E924 No Agency Sterling Price or Error: E925 No Agency Euro Price. If an ebook is listed as Agency but does not have the appropriate Agency pricing we will not be able to sell it. Page 5 of 7

6 Where can I find the ISO-3166 country codes used in the ebook Biblio data? Where can I find a list of currency codes required in the ebookordermsg LocalSaleCurrency? We use the ISO-4217 standard In the data feeds do the RRP and Agency Prices include VAT? Yes. All the prices are listed including the VAT at the current UK value (20%). It is important to remember that Agency ebooks are at a set price regardless of your local VAT percentage and you cannot sell them at a higher or lower price. It is a requirement that you include your Local Sales Tax percentage in the Web Service order for all Agency ebooks. In the Bibliographic Data what is meant by ExclusiveRights, NonExclusiveRights and NotForSale? ExclusiveRights = The ebook can be sold in the countries listed. NonExclusiveRights = The ebook can be sold in the countries listed, but other publishers may also be selling the book. NotForSale = The ebook cannot be sold in the countries listed. Generally the only field you need use to decide on whether you can sell the ebook or not is the NotForSale field. If the country you are selling to is not listed in the NotForSale field then you can sell the ebook. If the NotForSale field contains ROW (Rest of World) then you will need to use the ExclusiveRights and NonExclusiveRights fields to see where a title can be sold so that you can then work out all the other countries that you cannot sell to. My order is being rejected as market restricted even though the country I am selling to is not listed in the Bibliographic data? The market restriction information is provided based upon what a publisher tells us, therefore everything else must be inferred. So if ExclusiveRights and/or NonExclusiveRights are listed but there is nothing showing in the NotForSale, it must be assumed that you can only sell to the listed ExclusiveRights and/or NonExclusiveRights countries and all other countries are NotForSale. What is the purpose of the SecondaryRef in the EbookOrderMsg? This is an optional field that Gardners use on your invoices as a line reference. It is limited to 15 characters as this is the maximum size that we can display on the invoice. If you leave this field blank the invoice line reference will be the same as the EAN. Who do I contact if I have a problem with an ebook? Should you have any technical ebook issues please gsupport@gardners.com quoting your account number, the ebook EAN, the date of the order, a brief description of the problem and if necessary a screen shot. Please do not forward your end users contact details or copy them in on the . We will then investigate and get back to you as soon as we can. Page 6 of 7

7 EbookDownloadReply error messages - full description Order reply message - Error code: E911 Account on stop - This error signifies that your credit account has been disabled and we will no longer fulfil orders placed with us. To resolve this you will need to contact creditcontrol@gardners.com or Telephone: UK (0) requesting 'Accounts Payable', quoting your Gardners ebook account number. Once the accounting issue is resolved, you will need to place the ebook orders again if they are still required. Order reply message - Error code: E912 Market restricted title - This error signifies that the ordered ebook has marketing restrictions applied by the publisher. Usually received when an ebook is specified as not for sale within the country placing the order. Order reply message - Error code: E913 Agency ebook - This error signifies a problem with the agency agreement for the account placing the order for the ebook. Usually received when an account doesn't have an agency agreement with the publisher. Order reply message - Error code: E920 Invalid EAN - This is also the error received whenever an ebook is not available for sale at the moment the order is placed. This response is also received when the wrong format of the ebook is requested within the order request. Please contact us to confirm status of the ebook. Order reply message - Error code: E921 Invalid ebook format - This error indicates one of four potential problems 1.an invalid EAN is used 2.an invalid ebook format is used 3.an ebook is ordered in a format that we do not sell (e.g. a PDF format is ordered but the ebook is only available as an epub) 4.a duplicate order number is used. Order reply message - Error code: E924 No Agency Pricing (, or discount) specified by the publisher for the Agency ebook. This error code signifies that the specified ebook within the order is missing an agency price or discount. This information is supplied to Gardners by the publisher via metadata and usually requires confirmation from the publisher to resolve. Order reply message - Error code: E926 Account on Query - This error code means that the credit account is on hold and we cannot supply any new ebook links. To resolve this you will need to contact creditcontrol@gardners.com or Telephone: UK (0) requesting 'Accounts Payable', quoting your Gardners ebook account number. Once the accounting issue is resolved, you will need to place the ebook orders again if they are still required. Page 7 of 7