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Originally Posted by DMcCunney
Geo-restrictions tend to be contractual - does the publisher have the right to offer the ebook elsewhere than the US? What rights the publisher has are determined by the contract negotiated when the book is acquired. Tor may not have the right to offer it elsewhere.
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True, but in the case of Robert J. Sawyer, the same Tor books that may or may not have been geo-restricted in the Sony store (it's been awhile, and I don't remember whether I ran into that for him or another author), are available to Canadians via the Kindle and Kobo stores (the latter of which is notorious for hiding from browsing potential customers all books which are not available for their IP-determined countries).
Also, Tor is currently his sole English-language publisher outside of the occasional special editions via Red Deer Press in Alberta and he's a pretty e-book savvy guy (owns a number of the older e-readers and writes about e-book issues fairly often on his blog), so the overlapping titles, at least, should definitely be available to Canadians.
As for the four promo stories from Tor.com that I mentioned, those are also freely available to Canadians via Kobo and Kindle stores again, whereas at Sony they're US-only, even though Sony also normally sells other stuff to Canada, so it seems more an issue with the vendor than the rights (and Tor.com has been effectively distributing them worldwide via their website anyway).
Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
I believe Baen routinely buys world ebook rights for titles they publish, but that may not be true for third party books sold through Webscriptions.
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Possibly that might explain the paucity of the E-Reads titles that they carry compared to what Fictionwise still lists. Maybe Webscriptions is only selling the ones that come with unrestricted worldwide rights so that they don't end up inadvertently disappointing international readers.
In any case, I just hope more publishers adopt a Baen-like model when it comes to e-books. Or more authors a Cory Doctorow-esque attitude towards e-publicity.