What's the point of Geographic restrictions from a publisher's perspective?

[GlenBarrington]

It seems to me, that if a file is DRM'ed and the buyer actually pays for a book, the location of the buyer should be irrelevant. So what is in it for the publisher to go to the trouble and expense of applying geographic restrictions?

[rhadin]

There is no point from a publisher's perspective and all publishers, I daresay, would like worldwide ebook rights. But authors and their agents have been reluctant to grant publishers worldwide rights, which is why, for example, Harry Potter was published by one company in Britain and another in the U.S. Authors and agents are able to make more money by breaking up rights than by bundling them.

And if worldwide rights are sold, they will cost a publisher a lot more than for restricted rights which means higher costs. And then there would be higher distribution costs as well. You cannot separate an ebook from its pbook version today. Perhaps in 10 years, but not today.

[calvin-c]

Originally Posted by rhadin

There is no point from a publisher's perspective and all publishers, I daresay, would like worldwide ebook rights. But authors and their agents have been reluctant to grant publishers worldwide rights, which is why, for example, Harry Potter was published by one company in Britain and another in the U.S. Authors and agents are able to make more money by breaking up rights than by bundling them.

And if worldwide rights are sold, they will cost a publisher a lot more than for restricted rights which means higher costs. And then there would be higher distribution costs as well. You cannot separate an ebook from its pbook version today. Perhaps in 10 years, but not today.

Actually, your second paragraph contradicts the first. There is a point to GR from a publisher's perspective, and that point is that world-wide rights cost more. If they aren't set up to sell world-wide then it makes no sense to pay the extra cost.

I know, ebooks *are* easily sold world-wide, so logically, they should be purchasing restricted pbook rights & unrestricted ebook rights. They aren't though, and in my opinion it's because they don't want to change their contracts, which probably lump all book media together.

They might have a valid reason for that. Their current contracts have undoubtedly been thru the courts a few times so all the questionable clauses have been tested-and changed if the courts didn't approve of them.

Since the US court system, at least, has no provision for testing the validity of a contract prior to performance (or lack thereof) any change to the current 'proven' contract introduces risk that it will be ruled invalid.

I'm sure change will come-both authors & buyers will demand it-but it'll probably come slowly. Whether the publishers participate in the fast-moving Internet age or not, the courts assuredly do not.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by GlenBarrington

It seems to me, that if a file is DRM'ed and the buyer actually pays for a book, the location of the buyer should be irrelevant. So what is in it for the publisher to go to the trouble and expense of applying geographic restrictions?

To "protect" their market. If you have the UK publishing rights to a book, you want people in the UK to buy your edition from a UK bookstore, not a cheaper US edition, published by a different publisher, from an American bookstore. You therefore want the American bookstore not to sell to a UK customer.

[Mike L]

There's also a certain amount of historical baggage lying around. This dates back to the days when publishers operated in a single country or region, and it was physically difficult for them to distribute books in other parts of the world.

It's not so much a question of the author selling the rights to different publishers in different countries. What used to happen is that the main publisher (the one who first entered into a contract with the author) would buy worldwide rights, but would only actually publish in their own territory. They would then sell the rights to other territories to publishers in those other areas.

The same happened with non-book rights. The original publisher would publish a traditional book, but might sell the the audio book rights to a firm that specialised in that area.

Nowadays, the big publishers are multi-national and multi-disciplinary, but the model described above still survives. It probably seems natural from the publisher's perspective to include ebooks in the model.

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by Mike L

It's not so much a question of the author selling the rights to different publishers in different countries. What used to happen is that the main publisher (the one who first entered into a contract with the author) would buy worldwide rights, but would only actually publish in their own territory. They would then sell the rights to other territories to publishers in those other areas.

It's both, actually. In many cases, the author (or her agent) withholds foreign rights from the native publisher, in hopes of marketing those rights independently. In other cases, the original publisher does the sublicensing. But either way, there are usually geographical restrictions attached. Ebooks haven't been important enough in the formula for anyone to even think about making them a special case. That's changing, but it's going to take a while.

So when you're frustrated about not being able to buy a book from, say, Sony--don't blame Sony. And don't blame the publisher. Blame history.

[Crusader]

Why can't they change their rules/regulations (or whatever they call them) to view ebooks the same as printed books as far as the point of sale goes. If the point of sale is viewed as the location of the shop and not the buyer's PC they wouldn't have to negotiate any extra contracts for worldwide distribution.

Just like when purchasing a paper book the buyer can then decide where to buy from. If it works out cheaper to import a book from Amazon I order from them. No problems whatsoever in getting a physical book send to me. Why should an ebook be any different?

That way it might be a big incentive for the local distributors to get their heads out of the sand and start offering competitively priced ebook sales in the region they have the rights to - otherwise the buyers will go elsewhere where the product is actually offered.

[theducks]

Has anyone thought of replacing Geo rights, with "Language Rights" (for e-books)?
As pointed out. ex-patriots live all over the world.
A publisher gets to publish by (regional variant) of the contracted Language (varient)

This would allow for en-us, en-uk ...

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by Crusader

Why can't they change their rules/regulations (or whatever they call them) to view ebooks the same as printed books as far as the point of sale goes. If the point of sale is viewed as the location of the shop and not the buyer's PC they wouldn't have to negotiate any extra contracts for worldwide distribution.

Just like when purchasing a paper book the buyer can then decide where to buy from. If it works out cheaper to import a book from Amazon I order from them. No problems whatsoever in getting a physical book send to me. Why should an ebook be any different?

That's a very good question. Probably one the lawyers need to answer.

[DDHarriman]

One single word: stupidity.

[Kali Yuga]

A few reasons, some mentioned and some not....

• The primary stumbling block is the actual contracts. Authors and publishers sign a contract which says "you can sell X in this country." So a publisher can't sell an international ebook edition without having the rights. And as rhadin pointed out, getting all those rights will be expensive.

• Believe it or not, there really is more to selling a book internationally than merely hanging your shingle on the web -- and more to what a publisher does than slap a price tag on a book. You have translations, local marketing, local taxes, issues of what will sell in one place and not another, and so forth. An expat audience is one thing, truly selling a book abroad is another.

• There are legit reasons for different prices in different areas. E.g. many countries have a VAT on ebooks, while some others (notably the US) does not. Or, a book that has to be translated and won't have a big print run has to recoup that cost.

• Ebooks are currently a miniscule part of the market, and the hype is far in advance of the reality. So, it doesn't make sense to overthrow every existing international trade law, ignore all local taxes, and disregard pretty much every contract out there because a tiny portion of buyers are inconvenienced. It sucks, but that's how things go sometimes when you are on the bleeding edge of technology.

And for those who think it's just "publisher greed," keep in mind that enforcing regional restrictions most likely involves overhead costs that far outweigh any additional price advantages.

[alvico]

Originally Posted by DDHarriman

One single word: stupidity.

Yep, that sums it up nicely.

[fugazied]

Originally Posted by Mike L

There's also a certain amount of historical baggage lying around. This dates back to the days when publishers operated in a single country or region, and it was physically difficult for them to distribute books in other parts of the world.

Yup that's it as I understand it. The publishers got into the habit of licensing the books to various publishing houses in all the different countries/regions. Now when a book is released and the little publishing house in say... Australia (Penguin Australia) for example gets the rights to print copies of a book, they sell it in Australia and no one else can.

They don't want ebook sales canibalising their print sales for the region. Different countries also have different rules in regards to book imports I believe. So countries like Australia cannot import super cheap books printed by publishers in Indonesia when there is an Australian publisher making the same book. So not only does the regional publisher want to stop the books coming in, some governments don't want books from other regions coming in because it crushes local publishing houses (protectionism and anti-globalisation at work in the publishing sector). Just another factor to make licensing books and publishing more confusing.

Recently in Australia they wanted to open up the book market to allow cheaper foreign imports - the supermarkets wanted it, but the authors and publishers didn't. It meant they would lose their regional monopolies and also for authors, it meant less money per book I believe. They might get 50 cents for a book print in Indonesia under an asian publishing house and imported into Australia, while an Australian group would give them $1.50 per book (yes it's that low). It's a problem facing e-books.

[sabredog]

Not so certain of this but early last year the Australian government was keen to allow parallel importing of books into Australia (I assume that also meant ebooks as well).

There was a huge hue and cry campaign from the local author peak body demanding that the government stop the push and in the end the government did exactly that and dropped the concept. The push to loosen importation restrictions for books was backed by the bookshops, notably Dymocks IIRC.

I did not think much of it at the time, but now believe that this may be why (at least in part) that GR is applied to Aussie readers.

So authors can be just as much a issue when it comes to GR as well as the publishers. Certainly in this case anyway. It is a very short sighted and selfish view where the losers are the readers, once again.

Sorry fugazied, I did not read your post first!

[alvico]

Originally Posted by sabredog

Not so certain of this but early last year the Australian government was keen to allow parallel importing of books into Australia (I assume that also meant ebooks as well).

There was a huge hue and cry campaign from the local author peak body demanding that the government stop the push and in the end the government did exactly that and dropped the concept. The push to loosen importation restrictions for books was backed by the bookshops, notably Dymocks IIRC.

I did not think much of it at the time, but now believe that this may be why (at least in part) that GR is applied to Aussie readers.

So authors can be just as much a issue when it comes to GR as well as the publishers. Certainly in this case anyway. It is a very short sighted and selfish view where the losers are the readers, once again.

Sorry fugazied, I did not read your post first!

Please don't blame the writers. They really don't have any say in the GR matter. Parallel importation restrictions are another issue altogether.