Quote:
Originally Posted by ProfCrash
<snip>
Now, the Publisher in Netherlands could get off their butt and make the book available.
|
At first I thought that you meant that there were laws in place to prevent authors or publishers to publish certain books in countries such as the Netherlands. There aren't any. (Except in very rare circumstances; publishing a book that, for example, denies the Holocaust, is not allowed as far as I know.)
Many books that I read are from the big 6 publishing houses, such as HarperCollins, Random House and Penguin; many others are for example from Ballantine and Del Rey. They're not the only ones though, but they're the ones I read the most of.
I don't understand why some books are not available in the Netherlands while others, sometimes even in the same series, are. It may sound strange, but it's indeed the case: sometimes a series is only partly available in the Netherlands, while the entire series is available in the UK. Same author, same publisher. I just can't understand that.
I do not really count Dutch publishers such as Spectrum, because they either publish native Dutch books, or translated books; in that case it's mostly only the bestsellers, and they sometimes even quit publishing in the middle of a series, if it does not sell well enough in the Netherlands. I do not read native Dutch books (there is no native Dutch Fantasy to speak of, for example), and I don't read translated books if I can read the original language. If I can't read the original language (such as Japanese, in case of the book Miyamoto Musashi), I read the English translation.
With regard to laws about exporting digital stuff such as ebooks, there is nothing I can say because I do not know much about it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Yapyap
I'd assume that more likely than not there is no "Netherlands Publisher" for that book and never will be, because outside English-speaking countries, the market for English language books (print or ebooks) is not big enough for any local publisher to buy the rights to distribute the English versions. (There may or may not be a publisher interested in translation rights, but that's irrelevant here.)
|
Indeed; most of the time there is no seperate Dutch publisher. If I buy a Fantasy Novel by Terry Brooks, it's published by Del Rey in the Netherlands. Lord of the Rings versions and other Tolkien stuff is mostly published by Ballantine or HarperCollins as far as I was able to see. I also have books from Penguin, Wizards of the Coast (Forgotten Realms books) and Random House.
Translations are produced and published by "Spectrum Uitgeverij", but they do as they please: they only translate on a book-by-book basis as long as the series sells. Therefore they've been known to quit producing a series, and at a certain point, pick it up again later.
This is the main reason for me to sell all my Dutch books and restart with English versions only. If a series is poised to be a trilogy for example, I always wait until the entire series is done.