Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Don't you think you're exaggerating just a little? Rights-holders have an absolute right to decide who to sell distribution rights to, and in what territories. Nobody's being held to ransom. It's generally the decision of the author, not the publisher, to decide to sell rights to different publishers in different counties, because they can make significantly more money that way. Blame the author, not the publisher.
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As I pointed out in my original post on this topic, a statutory monopoly should be treated as a privilege. It certainly should not attract legislative intervention or technological trickery to try to create artificial regional markets that do not and cannot exist on the internet. I suspect what we are eventually going to see develop is sales of non-exclusive world rights to different players. And revenue to publishers will almost certainly be less.
I very much doubt that it is authors who drive regional rights, though they no doubt make the most of this doomed distribution model while it exists. Quite frankly I don't know how common it is for a Publisher to buy the rights to an author's work for one region only, leaving the author free to themselves sell the rights in other regions, perhaps after the book becomes a bestseller. Certainly, what I know of how the Big 5 work leads me to doubt that this is a common practice.
As usual, I blame the Publishers.