Literary agent Kristin, pictured at the left, has an article with this title on her blog. She discusses the reasons this happens and then says:
And yes, we ALL understand that with the electronic book there is now a greater global market for the English language version that needs to be exploited but with all English-speaking territories wanting to protect their exclusive sales area for their version, it’s a bit of tangle with no easy solution.
And yes, I get that avid readers may simply pirate an eCopy when the legal/legitimate one is not readily available. We aren’t stupid but the industry is not shifting fast enough to implement a quick solution.
Thanks to Marilynn Byerly for the link.
The simple solution is to split off the e-rights from the print rights. So, you could have your North American print rights, Europe print rights etc. and then have your English world e-rights, French world e-rights etc. If I in Canada wanted to buy a Spanish or French version, I would have to do so separately from buying an English version, but it wouldn’t matter what country I was in as long as I pay for the version or versions I want.
I understand that there are older books still stuck on this whole geography issue, but there really is NO excuse for current contracts still being written with e-rights lumped in and split by country. And I will continue to write to authors whose books I can’t buy, educating them about this problem and about the sale they lost for such a stupid reason.
basically, they know it but they rather loose money than give in. Good to know. That means I don’t have to have a bad concious, living in a country, which is not English speaking yet still doesn’t offer me English publications from English speaking countries, neither in printed nor in e-form. Except I would pay the hefty import fees from the local book store or get an US credit card illegally since I am not a US citizen.
That still doesn’t give an answer as to why paper books are treated differently from ebooks, even though the same rights apply.
For paper books the point of sell is the store, for ebooks, the point of sell is the customer; so Amaozn located in the US – or Amazon.uk with a warehouse in the US can legally sell US only print to anyone; silly to be polite, but that’s how it is
That still doesn’t make any sense for there being such a difference.
Keep in mind that some countries may not be willing to change regional rights for ebooks because they fear the Amazon juggernaut crushing both their on print-to-bookstore industry and any new domestic online bookstores. Amazon’s bullying is creating a backlash.
Also, keep in mind that distribution is only half the equation. It’s true that ebooks do reduce the role of publishers in distributing books. One distribution channel and even one online store could serve the entire world. But ebooks don’t eliminate the need to market a book within a particular country with its different language, different culture, and different media and advertising channels. And a company that’s spending money to promote a book inside a country is not going to be happy if the customers they have created can bypass stores in their country for one international store than has no advertising expenses. If advertising doesn’t pay, books won’t be promoted and, in many cases, not sell at all.
Michael – and that’s different from the paper book situation how? It’s just as easy to order paper books from Amazon.com as it is to order from Amazon.co.uk, and it may even be worth it in some cases, particularly ones where one store doesn’t have the book in question.
The rights fragmentation is causing problems, but in the words of the customer: “That’s not my problem.” Authors, agents, publishers and distributors will have to come up with some solution where the customer not only has access to titles world-wide, but where the ebooks also cost the same. If there’s pricing fragmentation, it’ll be yet another drive for customers to seek alternative sources of distribution.
There’s also another very real problem with this – in some countries VAT is charged on ebooks, but not for paper books. Unless some kind of pressure is laid on the respective governments, this will only hurt the industry.
Frode – I expect the answer to your question lies in the “cost of compliance” … Ebooks can contain metadata which identifies geographic sales restrictions, making it trivial for an online vendor to comply. Paper books contain either no restriction information, or something buried in the small type on the copyright page. That makes it expensive for a warehouse to determine if they should not fulfill an order, so if you have been willing to pay the freight, ordering say a UK title for delivery to a US address is rarely a problem.
I said no to a contract this week because both the author and the agent wanted (a) to decide which countries would be sold to and (b) an advance paid on each country selected. I will be interested to see if another publisher is dim enough to accept those terms.
I consider geographic restrictions plus pricing ebooks at the same level as print, plus embargoes on ebook releases to let hardcover sales occur to be a perfect recipe for encouraging ebook piracy.