Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
I'm an author in the US. I write a book and sell it to a US publisher, who publishes a US edition. All very well, but what about elsewhere? If my book gets published in the British Commonwealth, who does it? My publisher may not have a UK operation.
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If it weren't for existing contracts, your publisher wouldn't need a UK operation to sell digital goods to someone in the UK. Baen sells books worldwide from the US.
The only sensible way out of this mess would be e-publishing rights that are divided up by languages instead of territories: Sell the worldwide English language publishing rights to company A, sell the French language rights to company B.
Don't ask me how to fairly translate old compensation terms to the new contract model - that should keep an army of lawyers and agents busy for a while. Plus, of course, there'd still be the issue of localized marketing, but US players could hire UK subcontractors to do that and vice versa. Same for all the other English-speaking countries.
Whenever eBooks become the norm rather than the exception, this model shouldn't be too hard to implement for new digital releases, but as long as they're just an (often unloved) add-on to the pBook release, they'll be hampered by artificial restrictions.