Quote:
Originally Posted by KevinH
I am beginning to think that geographic restrictions make no sense when applied to e-books.
|
They do, it's just unfortunate that they are getting in the way of a consumer like yourself.
• Different nations have different sales tax policies; e.g. the UK and EU have VAT, the US does not. There is no international clearing-house for sales taxes.
• Curent region restrictions are based on the contracts between the publisher and the author. The publisher is limited by that contract.
• Authors do want to sell books, but they don't necessarily want to turn over all international rights to one regional publisher. (E.g. Bloomsbury UK may not have been the ideal company to sell
Harry Potter exclusively around the world.)
• Contracts, and other issues like tax collections, do not become null and void just because 5 years ago, someone figured out how to easily distribute content internationally.
• A US publisher is unlikely to have the expertise required to really sell an international edition -- e.g. translations, local marketing, navigating local laws, setting the title up at prominent local retailers, getting the book reviewed and so forth. As usual, people imagine that publishers spend 90% of their time smoking cigars and counting money, when they are actually expending all kinds of resources to get books sold.
I've noticed that lots of MR readers throw a fit when a publisher does something they don't think fits the contract such as proclaim they hold ebook rights when it wasn't specified in the contract -- but then turn right around and blast publishers for actually abiding by the contracts, by not violating the stipulations to sell outside their region. Go figure....
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by KevinH
Why are they not "stocking" the entire series from an author when the marginal cost of carrying that "additional inventory" is 0?
|
• Because the cost is not zero. It can cost quite a bit of money to convert a book into epub, mobi or other formats.
• Because ebooks, for all the hype, still constitute 3-5% of sales (possibly less, internationally)
• Because rights over electronic editions are not always clear-cut. It's explicitly addressed in more recent contracts, but not always in older agreements.
• In the US alone, around 250k new books are published each year; somewhere around 45k of those are fiction. If the publishers wanted to just convert all new fiction books from the last 10 years, that alone hits close to half a million books. And obviously, priority is going to the new books, which have much stronger sales than back catalog titles.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by KevinH
Why are they charging more than the current paperback prices for the books that are out in paperback or even older than that?
|
That's relatively rare. Also, it really doesn't cost a lot less to make a paper edition than an ebook edition -- maybe 15%.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by KevinH
I want to buy e-books and the bookstores and the publishers are going out of their way to make it difficult!!!!!!!!!
|
Again, your frustration is understandable, but you really ought to calm down. Ebooks are just getting started, and there are millions upon millions of books that need to be converted, lots of legal issues to be sorted out, and both publisher and author resources are finite. Contracts, international law, authors, publishers, retailers, and society at large do not perform 180º turns the second you bought your ebook reader.