Quote:
Originally Posted by BooksForABuck
It is annoying when you can't get a book in your format of choice. In some cases, the rights are confused--with older books, the author may retain eBook rights (or worse, they're contested between the publisher and author). Of course, there are also geographical rights issues (e.g., you're buying a book from the US publisher but the Danish publisher hasn't come out with it yet). Rights issues are a mess, but most especially this is the case for older books. For newer books, I'd think the first publisher would request worldwide electronic rights, which would mean that they could promptly offer eBooks worldwide (I certainly don't go to contract without getting worldwide electronic rights).
Rob Preece
Publisher, www.BooksForABuck.com |
I do take your point Rob but the experience made me realise that any book that has been printed in the last 20 years or so (I think the first version of QuarkXpress was released in the late 80s, and there may have been something before that), already exists electronically somewhere - since layout and origination has been electronic since then. So arguments about cost of producing the material in electronic format fall by the wayside - it's already there.
So the only issue I guess is rights. The edition of the book I bought has a publication date of 1980, so someone has made an electronic version of the book in order to produce it on a print-on-demand system. The book is clearly "inīprint" in the sense that it's not "out of print", but presumably at the time of publication no digital rights were negotiated - so what happens in those circumstances? Does the publisher have to go back and renegotiate digital rights if they want to offer it electronically, or do they in some way assume digital rights in virtue of their original rights?