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E-BOOKS E-books have been around for a while now and in some ways it seems superfluous to be explaining them. But, we find that many of our Readers (that is "real people") are sometimes still mystified by these electronic thingies. Older folk, especially, can sometimes feel a little daunted by the experience of e-books and are often at a loss as to how it can be possible to read a "book" that doesn't come wrapped in a decent dustjacket. Well, there really isn't anything to fear - e-books are simply another version of the print books you get from your local bookstore or your library. The PDF format that we use (that is the name of the file) presents the work as an actual "book" and our PDF's are formatted to A-4 size to allow for easy printing. E-books are generally cheaper than print books and are prized for their speed of delivery. If you order a print book you may wait up to 21 days for delivery. If you order an e- book you will generally have it within 24 hours. EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO ALLOW YOU TO READ YOUR EBOOK CAN
BE DOWNLOADED FROM THE INTERNET FREE. Our e-books are formatted and converted into PDF Files. This means that you will need a special program called a "Reader" to be able to "read" the e-book. Most computers and handheld devices now come with these Readers already embedded in them but in case you don't have access to such a Reader you can get a Free Download of the Adobe Acrobat by clicking on the logo below:
You will be stepped through the process to download the program onto your computer and away you go. Our e-books will come to you as PDF Files and these can be read by Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Unix, Palm programs using the Adobe Reader above. The Reader will work with Windows PC Computer, Windows Tablet, Macintosh, or Palm PDA's. The process works like this: You can order via our Online Catalogue or from any of our individual Author Pages. Select the e-book you want and note the Item Number and the price. Next you will have to choose how you want to pay for the e-books. Our Payment options are: 1. Personal cheque in Australian Dollars mailed to us. 2. Money Order (Australia only as overseas is too expensive) mailed to us. A note on security here - we respect your privacy and we never collect or impart any information to any other individual or organisation. Your details are safe with us. We wish others would treat us with similar courtesy. Our mail address is P O Box 1010 Rockhampton Qld 4700 Australia and people from within Australia can phone us on 1300 78 55 80. Overseas customers are best to email us. Messages and emails are checked often and we will get back to you as soon as possible and yes, we do so personally - we are not automated! We are an Internet business and our "physical" address is www.1stmist.com since we do not have a shopfront. We are a fully registered Australian business (BN17129114) and L P King operates as a Sole Trader. We have been operating for since early 2000 and during that time we have had our fair share of "challenges", the scariest being waking up at 5 am to a very threatening email from someone trying to "warn" us via their "psychic" predictions. Like it or not, there are some very sad people on the Internet and we are not going to entertain any rubbish. This includes people searching our site to get a way of spamming US or of bombarding us with unwanted advertising. Make no mistake we take care of business when we have to, and that includes people making bogus orders. Above all, people must respect our privacy and that is not negotiable. We can always be contacted here. 3. Direct Deposit (Again, for security reasons, you will have to contact us and request our bank details at the time you order). 4. Pay with your Credit Card using Paymate's Secure Online Server. You can use your Australian Bankcard or Visa or Mastercard for both overseas and Australian orders. There is no need to register with Paymate and if you click on the link below you will see how it works: Pay now with your Credit Card via Paymate!
You will see when you click on the Paymate Logo that the URL changes to "https" instead of "http", this indicates that you have been re-directed to a secure site. Your credit card number is fully encrypted using the highest level of security and we (that is, Mountain Mist Productions) never see your credit card details as these are kept secure by Paymate. Go to www.paymate.com if you have any further questions regarding security; you will also see they have a FAQ section but if you still need help contact us. You need to have java and cookies enabled and you will see that a pop-up window comes up so you will need to temporarily accept pop-ups if you have them blocked as the payment form will show up on your screen in a new window. There is no need for you to register to use this facility (no need to tick the box that asks if you are a registered customer) and our details are already embedded in the pop-up so you don't need to know any addresses or emails or anything. The wizard will step you through and it is very easy. It is programmed to accept Australian dollars and any conversions will be done for you by Paymate, they will calculate all the fees and your statement will reflect a payment to Paymate. Here is a currency converter:Once you are done Paymate will send you a confirmation by email. At the same time they also alert us that you have made an order and we get started on your email or print order. This may not happen immediately as we are not super-glued to the computer 24/7 but it will usually happen on the same day. Our office hours are Mon-Fri 9am to 5pm Australian Eastern Standard time but most week-ends we also deal with email. We are sent an email alerting us that you have made an order and we are advised by Paymate to wait until the funds are cleared before sending the order. We usually send the e-book straightaway though as so far we have not had any nasty experiences and if we ever do we can deal with that - tigers coming down from mountains and all that stuff. All we see is your name, address, email address and the item number you wish to pay for. The Adobe Reader has many features that allows you to change the size of the print and it also has limited audio capacity. It is worthwhile honing up on the features of this program and experimenting a bit until you get what suits you. We do allow the work to be printed out so that is another option for you. E-books are very flexible and whilst we allow printing, we do not allow copying or sharing of e-books because this takes away income from the Author. We are pretty big on Copyright and we always have the interests of our Authors at heart. E-Books - once you receive your e-book it is a good idea to do a File/Save as and put it into an easily-remembered file on your computer such as 'Reading" or E-Books" or whatever. Mostly our e-books are of manageable size but if we ever have trouble (like if your mailbox is full) we will send you a separate email and tell you to do some housework before we send the file. We want to help you discover the benefits of e-books so please do not hesitate to let us know if you have any questions or if we can help you in any way.
INTERNET SHOPPING
Just as with e-books, shopping on the Internet is a part of everyday life
now. You can buy just about everything from the comfort of your own home.
But, you need to know you can do so safely and securely.
We try our utmost to provide a safe and secure environment in which you can
shop. We have already explained how we have set up our e-books and how that
all works so that you can purchase securely online.
There has been a lot of press recently about credit card fraud. Since we try
and ensure the utmost security for what we do we have not been bothered by
any of this. However, there are a number of things you can do to make sure
you are not a victim too. Never give anyone else your pin number or card
details and only shop from a fully secure site that guarantees full
encryption of your card number. If you at all suspect any trouble contact
your bank and the seller immediately and it is a good idea to keep a card
especially for Internet shopping that has the lowest possible credit limit.
Also be aware that no one - not your bank, Paymate, Mountain Mist
Productions, the Queen, your mother-in-law or your priest has a right to
know your private details and we certainly will never email you and ask for
these. There are some bogus emails going around trying to solicit your bank
details. Do not open these and immediately report them to your ISP.
HANDHELD READERS
These are little devices which you can carry around with you and on which
you can read e-books. You are best to seek help from professional and
technical people before purchasing one of these items. Basically, the
software needs to be compatible with the hardware to enable you to access
and read the files you want to look at. You will need to check that the
device has the Adobe Reader embedded in it in order to read PDF files for
example. This is generally not a problem with the most popular devices. If
you have any difficulties whatsoever please do not hesitate to contact us
and we will help you if we can.
FORMATS OTHER THAN PDF We send all our e-books in PDF format as we feel this format is the most flexible. A lot of the Newer E-book readers require special software to read e-books and this means the e-books you buy must be in a compatible format. You should check with your Reader's salesperson before you purchase as to what formats you can read on the device. It would appear that manufacturers of certain Readers are "double-dipping" by requiring certain formats for their Readers and often this means you are restricted to reading e-books only for sale through the manufacturer's own site. We believe PDF is therefore the safest option since it can be read on the majority of Readers and on PC's and Mac's. We are not going to invest in expensive and superfluous software to accommodate a small section of the market. We are especially unwilling to accommodate software that may be read on mobile phones as we consider this irresponsible from a safety point-of-view.
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