Quote:
Originally Posted by tompe
Do you mean they should give away world rights for free when they can sell the non-world rights and get more money? Authors have been willing to grant world wide rights if they have got paid for it. So I would say it is the publisher that should be blamed if anybody should be blamed.
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The problem is, which publisher has the reach to promote a book worldwide? If authors give all the rights to an American publisher, then people in other places might never hear about the book.
And in Europe many countries have official price fixing for books, that would be finished. US sellers (who generally are the cheapest) would also have to start collecting taxes (sales tax or VAT) for people living in different countries. You must know European governments, they will hold on to every cent of tax revenue until you pry it from their cold dead hands.
It is not as easy as it sounds. Amazon really is the only one who could do it, and even they have separate stores in many countries with different prices for the same book in English.