Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
Harry, did you realize that, despite what was written in #377, Amazon is, among other things, a conventional publisher? This is separate from Kindle Direct Publishing AKA self-publishing.
One thing Amazon does, as a publisher, is to purchase classic mystery/thriller rights. Three examples I know of are Ian Fleming, Ed McBain, and Gladys Mitchell. In the latter two cases, they only bought rights to the older works -- just the ones a new reader of that author would be liable to start with. Anyone with time on their hands may want to scroll down this list of Amazon-published authors to find famous names I have missed:
https://www.apub.com/authors
When Amazon buys rights, they do not buy them in every country. Random House owns the Ian Fleming's James Bond eBook rights for the UK, so you find them in some British libraries but none of ours.
As to how I know what was written in the last paragraph, I know it because I have a bunch of library cards, mostly for nearby Overdrive collections, but also for two competitors I don't think you have in the UK, those being 3M and Axis360. Since I have read about one library eBook a week for the past couple years, I am often doing searches for specific author/titles, and have found patterns.
A few years ago, one pattern was that you would never find a Simon & Schuster book. That changed. Now I usually do. And now the overwhelming pattern I see is that if Amazon publishes it, I don't find it. If the big five publish it, including Hachette, I mostly do. Nothing is really proved in discussions like this, but I wouldn't ignore evidence either.
Agree, despite not having followed the advice in this post  |
So you are talking ebook rights right?
These days I like to start at the beginning but I don't insist on it as an inalienable right that I should be able to get an ebook copy at a library.
For most of my life I have read authors like McBain and Fleming on an availability basis. I saw an unread book I bought or borrowed it whether it was first, middle or last.
Still do this with ebooks if there is a gap in a series and I want to read a book by the author. Or I buy or borrow the paper copy.
My library has never AFAIK carried the complete works of Ed McBain although they do carry some of his first books in paper.
perhaps it is Amazon's fault and libraries all over the world are clamouring to buy complete sets of these books and many other backlist titles while their patrons are clamoring for the most recent best sellers. I have no evidence either way.
But who do we blame for a library not carrying all of these titles 20 years ago? Or the libraries not carrying all of the backlist or other titles available for library purchase today.
Helen