Thread: WTF do publishers think they're doing ?
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Old 02-17-2011, 09:26 AM   #68
fjtorres
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Quote:
Originally Posted by queentess View Post
People would like a citation for this. There are tax issues and customs forms... you've obviously never shipped internationally if you think it's that cheap and easy.
What form of citation? The link isn't enough?
They are doing it right now.
They wouldn't be doing it if they didn't see some kind of payoff.
(That is the well-established Amazon M.O.; find under-served markets and make money pennies at a time. Online book sales, walled-garden ebook readers, diapers... )

And yes, I have both bought and shipped content internationally; my BeBook came from the Netherlands, and I've ordered gaming and reader accessories straight from Hong Kong via ebay. Might not be as fast as driving to Best Buy or Gamestop but it gets there.

Over in the Pocketbook forums folks routinely get their PB readers from the US to Australia or Singapore with minimal drama.

The news of Amazon UK selling to the big commonwealth countries is news solely because of the experiment of *free shipping*. As when they introduced free shipping in the US (which stuck) the key is whether the increased volume makes up for the reduced margins.

Oh, and I agree that good editing is *required* somewhere along the way between author and reader. But not all traditional publishers do it well or (judging by some pbooks I've seen, at all) and its gotten to where some authors or agents are paying independent editors on their end of the deal.

My point remains: just because something's been done for centuries is no guarantee it will be done forever. The future is not the past with a new calendar and the times are indisputably changing. Some embrace change, others fight it, but it's still coming.
Only question is how fast and how painful the changes will be.

When you get down to it, these aren't things that anybody is planning and purposefully causing; it's more of an emergent effect of the changing system of world commerce.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence
Nobody is in control of the wave of change; there are no goodguys or bad guys, just surfers and wipeouts.
(To try a different metaphor.)
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