The job of a publisher is supposed to be bringing readers and authors together.
When you get down to basics only those two are absolutely essential to the reading experience: authors to create, readers to consume.
Everybody else in the chain (agents, publishers, distributors, and retailers) have to justify their existence by facilitating that connection. To the extent that they impede it they are failing to justify their cut of the pie and are fair game for cutting out. And they *are* being cut out, by agents and authors and retailers-turned publishers. There is no law of nature that guarantees anybody an eternal piece of the pie. Everybody has to sing for their supper and sing well enough to stay in the game.
We are in a transition era today: the old model of doing business is failing and everybody is unhappy, apprehensive, and defensive. New models and approaches are being tried, usually by looking at new ways to divide the pie instead of ways to grow it by leveraging the opportunities offered by globalization and the internet.
Just this week, Amazon UK announced free pbook shipping to Australia, New Zealand, India and South Africa.
http://www.the-digital-reader.com/20...ks/#more-16528
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/cust...aycom-21#first
This comes just as the Australian Borders goes into receivership. Not much else need be said; the old way of selling no longer works.
Pretending the problem isn't real, that it isn't getting worse by the day, is just irrational.
Change is coming whether you like it or not.
ebooks offer alternative ways to operate, ways to supplement the failing model in the short term and likely replacements in the longer term. Smart publishers have been looking at this for over a decade. Smart publishers have been quietly negotiating world language rights for ebooks and delivering satisfactory results to writers who are not finding their throats bleeding.
In these times of change those that adapt will prosper.
Those that don't will go.
It's their choice, not ours.
All we can do is watch what is going on around us.
And what is going on is that there is but one planet out there and one market per language. One for chinese and one for english. One for spanish. One for German. It is all global, in the end.
And in that one global market, Amazon UK can *profitably* ship print books to Australia, eat the shipping cost, and still undercut the local retailer.
That is not an opinion, that is a fact, people.