Quote:
Originally Posted by thinkpadx
Once again I wonder how this geo-restriction benefits the author  I've been told that it's the authors that wishes to cut deals with different publishers for different countries. But when an author isn't available for a certain country I fail to see how this is beneficiary. |
While it is ONLY of benefit IF the author sells the foreign rights, the reason is that the PAYOUT for the author is much higher for foreign rights than domestic. WHY this is, I have no idea. It's possible that that the upfront agreement pays out more because the book has already reached a certain level of success so the foreign market feels comfortable offering more. In this day and age, I think it probably hurts the majority of authors more than it helps. You have to have a top agent who has the right contacts to get a foreign deal and that agent has to bust behind to get the various deals.
In this age, it would be VASTLY smarter/easier to make the ebook available. The problem, of course is that most ebooks START in the US market and if the book STARTS here, it's hard to georestrict the ebook here and not elsewhere (and the US company is going to control the US e-rights so the author can't just make it available...)
M