Quote:
Originally Posted by AprilHare
Too bad if you're an Australian who has written a cracking good read and can't sell it as a ebook because of geographical constraints placed on readers, eh?
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Joshua Gans, Australian economist and author,
wrote about this:
Quote:
HERE is a curious fact: as an Australian, I cannot buy my own book. Now that isn't quite true. I can buy the locally published version of Parentonomics in bookstores here or I can get overseas bookstores to send me the non-Australian version. [...]
But that isn't the cheapest way to get the book. If you have a Kindle - Amazon.com's e-Reader - you can get the book for $A12.59, which is 40 per cent of the Australian bookstore price. I've had an opportunity to try it out and it is by far the best way to read my book as well as being the most cost-effective. Not being a US resident, I cannot own my book that way - well, at least not without jumping through hoops to violate Amazon's terms and conditions or something like that. Let's face it, when an author is barred from owning a copy of their own book, something is wrong.
So why is it possible for hard copies of books to move across international borders but not electronic copies? The answer is that publishers, who have intellectual monopolies over these works, for their own reasons have not done the deals to make it possible. Regardless of what I, as an author, might like, a gatekeeper is standing between my readers and my book.
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Hopefully the government will observe the Productivity Commission's advice and abolish the parallel import restrictions so overseas publishers can legally sell us ebooks. I'm not holding my breath for most Australian publishers to even realise the technology exists.