[neilmarr]

Hya Daron:

Contracts with publishers are usually negotiated by agents, whose job it is (and whose interest its in because they're on a percentage of author return) to maximise author return.

Often this means that it's more financially attractive to the author/agent to sell rights to separate publishers around the world. (Sometimes a publisher may be authorised to sell rights to another foreign publisher or a subsidiary of its own as a kind of agent's agent). That's why you'll often see a paper book in one country with, for instance, a different cover, adjusted text content, or even a new title, and with a different release date (this last being critically important).

The system has worked well for a century. But online book sales have rocked the boat ... then the red tape kicked in when ebooks arrived.

It was soon established by governments around the world that a physical book's point-of-sale is the country where the order is placed and from which the book is dispatched. But the point-of-sale of an ebook is taken as the local location of the machine used for download.

In other words, if you buy a new blockbuster in paperback or hardback from Amazon, the point-of-sale will be the Amazon base from which your order is received, packaged and dipatched, often the US. If you want to download the same title produced by the same local-rights holding publisher in ebook, the point-of-sale is where you actually download, which might be Hong Kong, Brisbane or Cape Town, where a completely different publisher holds rights to the title. So ... geographical restrictions kick in.

These problems are beyond the control of retailers and publishers, though I do agree that the blame largely lies with publishers and agents for sheer shortsightedness.

Some publishers (like my own indie house -- link below) foresaw this problem arising a decade ago and have always negotiated full international distribution rights contracts for ebook along with treebook. Others (especially the big boys and major agencies) were slower on the uptake and things are in a twist as a result.

There will eventually be a fix, but I can't think what it will be unless authors' agents work with publishers to reach a compromise where a single publisher gets international paper and ebook rights or one publisher gets international treebook and another international ebook, with higher author royalties taken into consideration to compensate, and those two cooperate to make things work smoothly for all concerned ... including the reader.

Best wishes. Neil

PS: Oh, and there's one other thing that might well go if such a sensible agreement is made ... ebooks might become ...