Quote:
Originally Posted by ficbot
I understand how authors might say to themselves 'why shouldn't I get more money for the UK rights' for instance, but where it breaks down for me is who holds the ebook rights for the American living in China, for instance? In their rush to protect one hypothetical right over another, they are leaving money on the table from willing, paying customers who have no store which will sell to them.
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Exactly! I can understand splitting up the market for, say, the different English-speaking areas, as I doubt that e.g. a UK publisher picking up an American book would only want print rights and let the American publisher have the ebook rights for the UK market as well.
But in the current day and age, there is a not insignificant number of people living in non-English-speaking countries who would prefer to read English books in the original language. Local publishers in these countries will
never want to buy the rights for the English versions in those markets - at best, they'll want to buy the translation rights (but the people who would want to read the book in English may not want to or be able to read the translated version even if that happens).
Separately, the markets may not be huge, but add them up and the author who doesn't give anyone the international (any territories outside the usual English language markets) rights for the ebook, and the publisher who doesn't want those rights (or doesn't want to exercise them even if they have them), are just voluntarily excluding a large number of potential customers.
And honestly, while I don't condone piracy (I've opted to pretend to be American in those cases where I really want a certain book), I don't think those authors and publishers should complain about
lost sales in that particular case. One can argue whether piracy is justifiable or not, but if the author and/or publisher refuses to sell, then if the reader gets a copy by other means, it can't really be a lost sale.
(It's not always the author: I've e-mailed some authors about the geo-restrictions for their books which are available for US customers; at least in one case, I got a reply from both the author and her agent, who both told me that they don't know what the issue is and that the publisher has international ebook rights. I assume the publisher has simply chosen not to exercise that right, then.)