|
No Whitcoulls has almost nothing. They seem to go for a few chick lit type books or popular novels way after everyone else has read them. I doubt whether Whitcoulls are even interested in the ebook side of business. Ever since they have been owned by an equity company the stores have been pretty depressing. They have next to no non fiction books. I want to be able to read a review and head off to a book store and buy. Amazon certainly have the stuff I want in stock but they will not sell many books to New Zealand for same reason. Silly thing is that Amazon will sell any print books to us but baulk at ebooks.
The story gopes that authors only licence their books to certain publishers in certain countries. So an American author might licence Harpers in USA but choose to licence the rights to Collins in UK.
While on the surface that makes a certain sense when you consider that many of the book companies are owned by the same person Rupert Murdoch then he is certainly in a position to say we will only accept books that can be sold anywhere. At the end of the day authors only want slaes and why should they care where the sales occur as long as they get their money.
The alternative is the pirate market and if authors don't wake up they will be in same position as movies and music. People will be honest if they can do so at reasonable price and ease of access.
Apples Itunes is a case in point. Once the access and price were reasonable people used it in their millions.
The movie companies went the other way and tried to keep films out of the video market until they were so old that no one cared. SO people pirated the movies and now the moguls are screaming and trying to set up streaming sites to capture a lost market. A bit late I think
|