http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/surrey/8516122.stm

Brenna

Except, Amazon has an even worse incentive, because it manufactures and sells a complementary product. Making ebooks cheap as possible is great for them because that means people are more likely to buy a Kindle. So what if it means new authors can barely make a living.

A good comparison is the music industry, precisely because of the differences which made the iTunes, single price model such a good idea there.

1) By the time the music industry realized it had a problem, online piracy of their goods was already rampant. Worse, people thought it was okay for them to download a song on Napster. iTunes was actually increasing the value of online songs from $0 to $0.99. This is not the case yet in the publishing world. Piracy is not rampant, and most people still expect their books to cost ~$20 when released, and less a few months later. Amazon is devaluing books.

2) When iTunes was created, very few people bought digital content. People were still used to buying physical stuff. It had to make people comfortable with this concept. By sticking to a single fixed price, it reduced barriers dramatically, since a few questions buyers have was eliminated. Should i buy this tune @ 1.49 or the other one at 0.79. Or should i wait for a month, and hope the price will drop… There are a lot more buyers of digital content now (the iTunes store, including the app store has been a huge part of that) who are a lot more savvy, than they were about half a decade ago.

3) Finally, the vast majority of musicians (the actual creators of content) actually make their money from touring gigs. Music sales are almost like advertising for them. Which is why you see tons of smaller bands distributing their music for free on Myspace. They want to build their fan base, who will them buy merchandise and come to concerts. There is no equivalent for authors. The book sales are their livelihood. If books get devalued, they make no money. Which is why people like Scalzi were pissed. Amazon had arbitrarily taken away a huge chunk of his income (they stopped selling paper books too….it was just a low power play by them, which hurt the authors more than Macmillan).

brennalyonsden.blogspot.com/

You will find a polling to the left side top of the blog. Vote in it, and give me feedback. It’s one simple question…how much are you willing to pay for a novel-length (NOT category length…something 300 mass market pages long or so and selling for $6 or more in mass market on Amazon and with a mass market list price of $8 or so…specific enough detailing on what the comparison will be?) fiction e-book. I have it set to run for more than a month, and the results will be reported in a post from EPIC. I believe I know what avid e-book readers will say, but let’s see if I’m right.

At the very least, this will be an interesting experiment.

Brenna

Yes, UK is somewhere in the middle of our hopeless and Americans furthest along.

Actually looking at Waterstone’s yesterday out of interest – and while the range there is still small, they did have SF by Iain Banks, Alastair Reynolds, Neal Asher, Gary Gibson, Charles Stross, Peter F. Hamilton, etc. The one that is oddly treated is Ian McDonald – Cyberabad Days is done, but not his other books. Plus all the Angry Robot books are available.

So while not everything is there (unless maybe you like Star Trek ), some effort to get the top of the line in at least.

Also again, Macmillan uselessness on pricing – Asher’s Gabble collection – 15 pounds ebook, 7 pounds paperback. From 2008, that one.

Indeed, this is probably why Amazon’s response was “no more sales” instead of “lawsuit”.

UK publishers are probably nearer to Australians than Americans in that respect. I’m under the impression that a lot of the movement in ebooks (all over) is due to champions here and there in the business (often in the sf/f imprints) pushing for it. The smaller the business, the fewer of those people there are.

Agh, duh. Yeah, that’s exactly the situation — North American Rights. I’ll appeal to lack of sleep for my excuse in blanking on that. But yeah, there should be North American Rights works that ficbot can get in Canada, but you can’t get in Australia; and UK and Commonwealth Rights works that neither of you can get.

Amazon does sell books others are not though.

Thanks. I’ve seen you mentioned a couple of times recently, so will be certainly giving one of your books a shot soon.

Hal,

Looking at Fictionwise for one, it actually seems that Canada gets dealt with as part of the USA, or maybe some North American deal – as a lot of books are for sale ‘US, CA’. Which makes sense, of course, being very close. Plus in some cases you could just about walk to the bookshop in the other country.

Note that under Australia law retailers, if the local publishers do not provide an edition of a book promptly, can import one from anywhere that will sell it to them. Be interesting if some larger retailer is getting some advice here on the electronic side of things, too.

I know the odd person that can make books for people, certainly. You know who some of the best backlist converters are of course – those that have been doing it for years, darknet style. I even know authors who have taken this work done to use and sell some of their backlist.

Australian publishers are very backward currently. They really aren’t going to try until a hardware manufacturer starts moving lots of readers of the expensive variety – and we get the double priced electronics Australian tax there, too. Mobile phones exist in abundance. My guess is they won’t get around to much until some enterprising likely foreigner starts eating their lunch via some clever method or other. They have pretty much ignored it so far. So currently you might get some digital rights money from the non-UK part, but you’ll be getting not many sales, other than from those that do the identity disguising, location spoofing type tricks – which will get cut off more and more too over time. There are people keen enough to do that, with the knowhow, who in some of the cases could find the book online for free in one minute.

The silliest could not buy example I ran into, and one of the first, was Sean Williams. I can pretty much walk to his place if I wanted to and hand him a tenner in person and say ‘load up my pda, mate’. His books are in the library, in all the bookshops here, but could I buy the ebook? Nope. The answer there was ‘nope, not going to be doing anything’, after he asked. Super loopy.

This should surely change the game with geographic restriction, because if the ebooks they offer via UK Amazon are licensed by the publishers for UK and Commonwealth territories, there’s no way they should be stopping an Australian or Canadian from buying them, as I see it — not on the basis of copyright. I’ll freely admit that this is an Amazon-skeptic PoV, but I look at the situation as is and I see a big American company that — like some Americans have an unfortunate tendency to do — forgot about the rest of the world; it rolled out the Kindle in the US with promises that it couldn’t keep beyond its boundaries. And rather than expediting the roll-out of the UK Kindle and the UK Kindle Store, getting all the deals with publishers signed and sealed, so that it could *meet* those promises sharpish when it realised this, it brought in heinously stringent measures that treat those customers appallingly.

I’m wondering how much of that clamp-down was precipitated by Amazon’s two big run-ins over breaches of copyright last year? They seriously lost face on the text-to-speech case (and for what it’s worth, I’m with Gaiman on this in thinking it’s *not* a threat to audiobook rights; if Amazon hadn’t caved to the Author’s Guild and the publishers, from my reading it sounds like they had a good case.) The Orwell fiasco was worse. Sure, I think the over-extended US copyright that it turned on is a fucking outrage (mandated by the Mouse). I’m even willing to cut the publisher some slack on their breach of copyright, to take it as the fuck-up of someone who genuinely wanted to make a classic available in digital form and just made a mistake in thinking it was public domain (i.e. rather than assuming they’re just working on a “get rich quick” scheme, flogging ebook users something that’s *free*”.) But Amazon set up a system where that’s piss easy to do and then, when it got them into hot water, they shafted the customer. Point is, I wonder how much these two instances put the fear of God into Amazon and Fictionwise over the copyright question as regards US ebooks being, you know, for the US. It might not have taken much pressure from the publishers for them to realise they were playing with a loaded gun. I mean, if the Orwell case was bad news for Amazon, I can imagine Fictionwise shitting themselves that it could have been them — because they wouldn’t even have the option of recalling the ebook.

Anyway, the UK Kindle Store should ease things up for Kindle users, I’d *imagine*, even if it doesn’t help those using other devices. There, I don’t know. It seems to me, you’re looking at approaching specific writers about specific titles, sounding out editors who have online presences with more general questions about what kind of consumer demand actually gets stuff done. There might be no one person you can go to and say, “hey, why can’t I get this in ebook?” and have them answer, “you can’t? shit, let me sort that out for you.” But writers and editors are generally pretty open to engaging with readers if you’re savvy of the buttons not to push. And one thing I’ll say: in the sf/f community a good review blog can wire itself into the discourse pretty quickly, gather attention to itself, and if writers and editors start paying attention to you when you discuss this new release, say, you’ve got a platform for highlighting how *that* new release is *not available* for whatever reason (and, of course, for ripping into the garbled fuck-ups that are).

Whatever your strategy, if you’re looking at some more politicised campaigning against geographic restriction itself, the fact that there’s no such enforcement with physical books begs a whole lot of questions that kind of invite journalistic investigation, it seems to me. In the meantime unfortunately, you’re left with the barriers themselves and — other than piracy — the only option being, well, “smuggling,” I guess you could call it. I mean, in looking into this stuff, I saw a few people talking about ways they got round the geographic restrictions with fake billing addresses and suchlike, though I don’t know if those loopholes have been closed off. If this sort of shit were in place for physical books, if a UK reader couldn’t buy a US edition of my book from Amazon.com and there wasn’t a UK edition available, I’d… hold off on encouraging them to game the system, but largely just because it’s their ass on the line, not mine.

Don’t know if that’s a useful answer, but it’s

Is equalising the disparity a viable solution? Depends what the motivation is and how you want it equalised: by applying the same restrictions to physical books; by removing them from ebooks; by radically changing how the whole system of copyright works. Going the latter route is pretty much wildly impracticable unless you’re sufficiently schooled in the existing theories and actualities of it to make a solid case, and in a position of leverage to make it happen. Copyright needs a damn good shake-up, and I think a pressure point will be reached somewhere down the line when letting the Mouse run the show just becomes visibly insane to everyone, but at the moment the opposition to that is… the turmoil of alliances and antipathies where “information wants to be free” intersects with the craftsman/artisan ethos. What one person sees as utopia another sees as dystopia.

I mean, a reader might think surely it’d be a damn sight easier to sell digital rights to one publisher that covered the whole world — basically lump US & UK and Commonwealth together; but this guarantees complete dominance by the US publishers in the ebook market, because they’re going to outbid the UK mob every time. I might well hold onto them and do it myself in the future, but that doesn’t change the situation with my books right now, and I’m not going to argue that’s How It Must Be For All. Or at least any argument is going to be just that, and it’s where I think you’re going to end up with a lot of people bumping heads over their polarised views. Building something that can take on the Mouse, and building it out of a cacophany of viewpoints, updating copyright for the 21st century — that’s herding kittens at the moment.

No, in terms of this specific problem — geographic restriction — attacking it on that front is just, to my mind, expending energy in polemic that would be better served in a pincer action: attack the non-application of restrictions to physical books at the same time as you attack the application to digital books. This is a much simpler justice argument that I see little defence against. That sort of case requires power and commitment though, champions and campaigns with high enough profiles to make the injustice visible, create the actual pressure you need to effect change. Articles? Quotes from experts in copyright and import/export legislation about the disparities? Cause I’m damned if I can see a justification for it. Problem is, this is also a long term game, and it’s not going to do much good right now for those of you who just want to *read the fricking books*.

So is it more practicable to aim at the second part of the problem — the lack of rights being exercised in the relevant territory? For ebook readers in Australia, Canada or other English-speaking countries around the world, that most likely means finding out which publisher holds the UK and Commonwealth rights and putting pressure on them. Blue Tyson, you ask what proportion of writers hold separate Australian deals. I can’t honestly say how this works across the board, what exceptions there might be; Orbit has a separate Australian imprint, for example. But, barring writers from Australia who published with a native company first, I *think* a lot of writers are going to be in a similar situation to me, having licensed UK and Commonwealth rights to their UK publisher. Ultimately, whoever publishes the physical book in your territory is you first port of call.

Or maybe your second. It’s going to be complicated by writers and agents who’ve now wised up, who now aren’t just automatically lumping digital rights in with their physical print deals. There might be a lot of writers who’d be happy to do what the previous poster, Jane Fancher, and co. are doing, but just haven’t got their arses in gear, don’t have a scooby where to begin. If they’re available online, asking them first can’t hurt. Are there any plans for the release of an ebook version beyond the US? Is there a non-US publisher sitting on the rights that you can contact, or are the rights unsold? If the rights are sold but they aren’t being exercised… how effective are email campaigns to publishers requesting releases — asking if and when works will be made available, asking whether backlist works will be converted? I’ll be honest, I have no idea. You’d be better off asking an editor, who might tell you exactly what sort of reader support is useful for persuading the relevant people. If the rights aren’t sold… well, how keen are you and how keen are they? Are you capable of converting an MS for them if they’re completely clueless? Or pointing them in the right direction and promising support if they say, “I’d like to but I have no idea where to begin?”

Taking the UK as a base, you’ve got UK companies that import dead tree books from the US and sell them to you, and US companies that will let you order books and ship them to you internationally. You can order from the UK Amazon in the US and get it exported to you, or vice versa. Meanwhile, someone in the US could get the imported UK edition of my first book on Amazon.com before it came out from Del Rey; and someone in the UK can now get the imported US edition on Amazon.co.uk. I’ll confess: I don’t know the limitations that might be placed on this, the extent to which this situation may be to do with legal loopholes and publishers seeing a benefit that outweighs the cost: people buying the UK hardback before the US trade paperback was out are lost sales to Del Rey, but they’re also early word of mouth that might prime the market, result in a boost to sales on release. I don’t know what an editor at one of the NYC publishers would say about this, but I suspect it might be interesting, more forward-thinking than kneejerk protectionist. Anyway, the point is there’s that import/export option.

And, of course, leaving aside all that, there’s always the possibility of a UK person picking up a book on a visit to the US, or getting a US friend to buy a copy and send it to them, and vice versa. More costly, of course, but in this day and age, with ebooks being non-physical, are there less onerous equivalents to that “visit” or that “friend”? Cause as far as I’m concerned, one person sending a copy of the US edition of my book to someone in the UK who can’t get a hold of it… well, I’m more interested in why they can’t get a hold of it.

Which is what we’ve got with geographic restriction, it having come in and cut off the import/export trade completely for ebooks. No geographic restriction on physical books though, eh? No barriers to Blue Tyson or Ficbot — both living in UK and Commonwealth copyright territories — buying the Del Rey edition of my book and having it exported to them. Looking at the first online bookstore I find *based* in Australia, I even see the Del Rey edition on sale rather than the UK edition, which is presumably classed as an import. And how does the “point of sale” factor pointed to by Chris apply to ebooks but not physical books? There’s a palpable inequity here. I can’t see why it should work one way for dead trees and another for bits.

But aside from the injustice, there’s the pragmatic issue: even if these geographical restriction were applied to physical books, Blue Tyson or Ficbot should still be able to order a copy of the UK edition of my book from Amazon.co.uk, because Australia and Canada come under UK and Commonwealth copyright territory; if there *is* no UK edition in ebook format, they’re shafted. And, yeah, that sucks the big one for me as much as for them. If that were the case with a physical book, I’d be looking for whatever way around it I could find. The author’s hardly going to complain that my cousin Sal in NYC picked up a copy and mailed it to me; it’s just a US sale instead of a UK sale.

Over at http://www.closed-circle.net CJ Cherryh, Lynn Abbey and I are working to give you all reasonably priced, DRM-free ebooks. We care a great deal about the quality and have even sent those who have purchased ebooks from us updated downloads when we discovered a way to make them better.

It’s not that hard to give readers a good-looking product. We’ve figured out how to do it, mostly on our own, but with a lot of input from our readers. We have freebie downloads and offer ten formats in a single zip file. The creation and conversion software, like Calibre and Mobi Pocketcreator, is free and very self-explanatory.

Not having dedicated ebook readers ourselves, other than our computers, we depend on our readers to let us know what problems they’re having and what features they want. (I’m currently working on giving them a live-link TOC in my next release.) Our readers, bless them, are endlessly patient with our growing pains, but for a group of three old ladies who only started working on this a few months ago, we’re doing pretty good, especially considering we’ve also had to create the website and do all the covers. At the same time, we’ve ripped out our backyard, put in a 4000 gallon pond with waterfall and fish (all done on our own, with our mantis tiller and a lot of sweat), kept up individual blogs and continued writing new stuff.

(Are you young techno-stud writers embarrassed, yet? )

The first step lies in ditching MS Word for Word Perfect (or similar prose sensible software) so you can actually see and clean up the code before you convert the file into html for constructing the ebook file in Mobi Pocketcreator, which gives a great file for converting to other formats via Calibre.

Please don’t lump all authors together. There are plenty of us who “get it.” Especially those midlist authors who have been shafted by the New York publishers for twenty years. Publishers don’t listen to us so we’re trying to find a way to deal directly with the readers.

We only opened the doors of CC in December and we’ve been stunned and humbled by the support of readers. Are we rich yet? far from it. Our numbers are a fraction of what they’d be if we put the books up on Amazon. But we’re working at building a direct relationship with the readers, which is something most authors I know have always dreamed of, a relationship only made possible by ebooks and the internet.