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Originally Posted by rogue_librarian
Yeah, that must be why there aren't any Potter ebooks on the internet. (Down, sarcasm, down! Bad boy!)
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I was referring to
legitimate editions...
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Why not the publisher that also sells physical books? Or one of their subsidiaries?
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In the mentioned case, it might be the print publisher(s), or someone else entirely - I can imagine Amazon making an offer to do an exclusive ebook edition, sold only through Amazon. It would all depend upon what sort of deal Rowling might accept.
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If you want to read "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" (or the GBP/USD exchange rate is in your favor) you buy at Bloomsbury. If it's "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" you're after (complete with Americanized spelling and removing a few British oddities, I presume) do business with Scholastic.
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So you suggest each publisher having ebook rights in
their territory, which puts us right back where we began, save that nobody has a problem with the arrangement? I don't see the reasons why folks have a problem with that sort of arrangement now disappearing.
People have problems with that sort of arrangement now because part of what they are licensing
is exclusive rights in their territory. If the ebook is available from multiple publishers, and any customer anywhere in the world can get the book from any of them, that exclusivity goes out the window, along with a major competitive edge. Publishers, like other content providers, compete on the strength of their catalog, and the fact that only they have a particular piece of content.
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What I'm asking for, really, is not to treat ebooks any differently from physical ones. Apparently that's too much to ask for.
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At the moment, it appears so. But this is not entirely the fault of the publishers, and not entirely under their control. As I asked earlier, what would you have the publishers do about it?
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Dennis