Quote:
Originally Posted by blunty
It is always easy, and commonly done on these forums, to put the blame solely on the Publishers. Working for a UK publisher we will often have the rights to a book to be produced in the UK while a different publishing company has the rights in the US. These rights are negotiated and sold usually by authors and their agents to maximise their returns from their intellectual property.
This discrepancy in territorial rights does not sit well with the global internet market but are a consequence of the historical set up in the industry. Any publisher, agent and author must have the ability to sell only to the market they have the rights for. Until every publisher is sold worldwide rights for every book, for every format as well then DRM and territorial restrictions will be with us. And that set up will hurt the smaller non US publishers much more than the Harper Collins and Penguins.
As we do not have the Kindle here in the UK I can not buy e-books from Amazon, even though I have a device and could transfer from my PC (No wi-fi). That is not down to territorial rights, that is just down to Amazon in the main.
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that's a good point, but i think the key concept there is that these problems
"are a consequence of the historical set up in the industry." the whole point is that the industry is trying to maintain a way of functioning which is no longer relevant due to the fundamental changes brought about by technological advances.
certainly, it makes sense to negotiate rights based on territory when we are talking about physical objects which will be distributed via chains of physical stores. but when the merchandise is dematerialised and is sold via something called the "world-wide web" (it's right there in the name !!), it might be time to rethink those old limitations.
particularly since, as i mentioned previously, i find it even more ironic that i can buy a paper book from US-based amazon from anywhere in the world, and they will ship it to me. i've done this many times.
so yes, i do place the blame on the side of the publishers, for obstinately clinging to a hopelessly out of date distribution paradigm which is totally irrelevant to today's world.