Quote:
Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks
Except it isn't a tax issue--it's who gets the money for the book on the publisher's part. The UK publisher wants to sell from its location to whatever location rights it bought. The American publisher of the same book doesn't want you to buy it from the UK if you live in the US because THEY have the right to sell it to you. The author is compensated either way, but the publisher is not--often a publisher on the US will sell rights to a completely different company elsewhere--thus if that company doesn't get the sale, they paid for rights they are unable to benefit from.
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Only partly true. If the book is available from a server in the US or a server in the UK, I'll probably go with the US server. Certainly if the choice is between a US server and a Chinese server, I'll go with the US server. In your example, the UK publisher is selling from its
virtual location, and will probably get more online business from UK customers, because they're advertising their store there, so UK folks are more likely to be aware of it. Beyond that, I see no reason why the sellers shouldn't compete on a relatively level playing field. If a publisher buys the rights to distribute a book within a certain geographical location, and actually distributes the book, they'll likely get the business. If they don't make the book available, people who want to buy the book are likely to look elsewhere. Just like with print books.
I have three of the Harry Potter books in Canadian editions because they were printing on recycled paper and I chose to pay the extra to get those versions. I don't live in Canada. Amazon Canada warned me that the delivery guarantees on release wouldn't hold in my case, but otherwise had no problems selling me the book. I really can see no reason why the situation shouldn't be the same for ebooks.
And I suspect that once ebooks become a large enough part of the market, the online stores will pressure publishers to allow this. And they will be successful in getting a change because this practice hinges on an interpretation of law, not something spelled out in the law itself (i.e. the "location" of the buyer).