Quote:
Originally Posted by j.p.s
In general, various regional publishers that get geographic exclusivity and authors that are able to negotiate more total royalties and advances by dividing the rights than by granting worldwide rights to a single publisher or multiple publishers.
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No, it's historic for English Language due to agreeing to respect "Foreign" copyright after they didn't.
Dividing rights for more money for the Authors is a myth. It would only apply to about top 0.5% of published authors. The royalty is based on sales. Historically UK wholesale wouldn't import USA publishers as part of a boycott organised by UK publishers. There are still unresolved issues with music (see creative rights and performance rights royalties on USA radio vs elsewhere).
With the current agreed monopoly areas for English Language, a Publisher won't sell even online outside the "industry" agreed areas and won't market there. Also it's hard to get even one major publisher to take a MSS. There is no onus whatsoever for the Publisher(s) for the other region(s) to take the title too. Whereas if this (restrictive and possibly immoral) trade practice was abolished then Authors & Publishers would see more income from online paper & ebook sales even if no distribution and marketing in the local retail.
It simply means that many English Language books are not available at all, even online, outside the geographical area the publisher has agreed.
Many Irish retailers in the past did personal "grey" imports of USA magazines (no magazine historically has more than one publisher) and books (either unavailable from UK publishers or much more expensive). Ireland for books was dominated by UK wholesale, even for Irish Publishers. This was part of back to 16th C. when Elizabeth I cut all Irish trade except via England. It was only when Ireland & UK both joined the Common Market it started to reverse (Majority Irish imports from UK then), so that by the time the UK left the EU, Ireland no longer was dependant overall on UK for import/export. But UK still dominates Irish retail books and magazines and Ireland is expected to use Amazon UK (wrong currency & tariff barrier) and till recently only UK Kindle sales (you can now opt for USA Kindle sales, but the sales are limited to titles in the UK, you just pay USA price plus Irish VAT).
DVDs & BD are now easier than ebooks or paper books! Though Region 1 DVDs are lower quality than Region 2 (or 4?) and while a BD player might play any DVD region, the BD player is still region locked.