Quote:
Originally Posted by blunty
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.
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I don't see worldwide rights happening in any near term time frame.
Having the world wide rights is one thing. Actually being able to
sell worldwide is quite another.
As you point out, intellectual property rights come into play. An agent selling a book on behalf of an author to a US publisher will be selling US rights, but foreign sales will be a separate matter, negotiated separately. (And having a US title also see things like French and German editions can mean a nice boost in an author's income from a book.)
Another complicating factor will be translations, which will have yet another layer of rights to factor in, as someone will have to do the translation and will have the rights to that part of the work.
And how enthusiastic will a foreign publisher who purchased rights to offer a book in their market be about a competing ebook version from a publisher elsewhere? Not very.
I'm afraid we are going to be stuck with stuff like this for quite some time. The simplest solution I can see is the ability to offer an ebook anywhere, with the publisher who owns the rights for a particular territory getting a cut of sales in that territory, even if they aren't technically the publisher of that electronic edition. But that's "simple" only in concept. Implementation would be a neat trick indeed.
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Dennis