Quote:
Originally Posted by Sweetpea
The last pbooks I bought online were bought from an US based company... Simply because they're cheaper... And that's why it's an issue now. Why can I buy one version of a book and not the other from the same shop?
It gets weirder. Why can't I even buy electronic (English!) books from an UK based firm? I mean, I'm in Europe, and last I checked, the UK was in Europe... And it's not like our local publishers publish books in English...
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Ah, now we're getting to some of the subtleties of the issue. It's not only a matter of the author's benefit, but also partly that of the publisher's convenience. Far easier to take in a tidy fee (plus future royalties) to allow a publisher in the UK to publish a book by an American author than to have to arrange to ship hard copy overseas.
But then, you have the governments getting in on the action, with the VAT and the fact that VAT is higher on e-books than on p-books definitely comes into play here, as do the various "literature as cultural item that needs protection" laws - and tend to make locally produced books much more expensive than imported ones.
At this point there are lots of vested interests in the current p-book based system. It could take a while for a uniquely e-book system to develop.