Quote:
Originally Posted by Critteranne
And just to confuse things, the overall owner of Hachette is a French company. When you look at the number of number of prints they own in multiple countries, you'd think they could figure out how to sell e-books to people in the UK (and other countries) without cutting off customers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hachette_Livre |
Part of the problem is that, while these companies may look like multinational operations, they're not. Apart from some lawyers, accountants and such in the worldwide HQ, they're mostly run as a set of local businesses. Using Hachette as an example, Hachette in the States is a company dealing with the north American market. Hachette in the UK deals with Britain etc etc. No-one deals with the world as a market, and so it's no-one's responsibility to consider the the Brit who lives in Spain and wants to buy from the US. UK Hachette doesn't want you taking advantage of lower prices over, there - it's lost business to them. d don't ven g down the "Yes, but the corporation as a whole benefits" route, because the UK guys get paid on what the UK sells, US guys on what the US sells and so on.
It's the history of web commerce: one industry after another doesn't get the impact of the tech-driven change in the market, and tries like billy-o to hang on to the old model until it's too late. And until someone comes along and breaks the old model utterly, we get screwed.
Look on the bright side - in 10 years, any one of these outfits that still hasn't got it will be roadkill - and oh how we'll chuckle