Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
The books you're complaining about, that *can* be bought for less by faking location are *licensed* to the local market as well as the original. Well, the issues I'm questioning isn't the manufacturing cost of the print edition but rather the cost of the license from the author or original publisher (plus the cost of staying in business). Digital or physical, the author wants to get paid. And get paid enough net to make it worth the transaction. (Note that in the recent EU VAT adjustment, the reaction of many authors selling direct was to simply stop selling to the EU as the cost of reworking their store for compkiance excessed the volume of sales.)
Again, I wonder if the license cost for the australian market is going to be only a proportional 6% of the US license.
I went and actually looked at the numbers (easy to find online, really) and for 2012 the trade book business in the US totalled US$16B while the Australian total ran US$900M (at your inflated prices) of which some 40% were imports. So, as far as local book vendors are concerned their market is actually 40% smaller than an equivalent population in the US.
Looking at it from the point of view of the original author (or his agent) licensing a book that got a typical low 4-figure advance, selling a regional license for US$100-300 is probably not an option as drawing up the contract alone is going to cost about as much. That 6% of US license cost doesn't look too reasonable for anything other than bestsellers...
So, looking from the outside, I'm going to guess that in addition to higher book prices, you folks also face a mid-list availability problem and that a good portion of those 40% imports are for books not available locally at any price.
I'm thinking that instead of arguing for circumventing geoblocks over price, a better case could be made over availability.  |
There are a lot of unjustified assumptions going on in here, but most important is the idea that the region is contracted separately*. What makes you think that a mid-list author even has much say over where their book is distributed by the publisher? If they have conflicting contractual obligations there is a good chance the publisher won't touch the book anyway. And even if they do have a say, there's a really good chance that it's covered by the original contract with just a yes/no as to where it should go**.
The bigger publishers already have a presence in Australia, the smaller ones have representatives that might deal with several, so operating costs can be mitigated according to need. Warehouse space is no longer the issue it once was - adding books to Print-On-Demand queues is not expensive or time-consuming. (Yes, we have printers down here too.
) Availability has, in the past, been a problem, but there is little excuse for it now.
* See this Konrath link: ""Territory" refers to where in the world the publisher is allowed to exploit these rights. In several of my contracts, Territory encompasses the entire world."
** Australia is not like the U.S., expecting books to have new covers and new editing just to appease the masses (or, more accurately, what the U.S. publishers think the masses need). Typically, we get the U.K. edition if one has been made, otherwise we get whatever's going.