AAA+ The end of georestrictions for India?

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by thinkpadx

Geo-restrictions is one thing I absolutely do not get. Who benefits from it? it's just a dinosaur copied straight off from the regular publishing industry which makes no sense whatsoever on e-books.

*sigh*

The primary reason for geo restrictions are the contracts with the authors, which specify who can sell what and where. It's the AUTHORS who are the primary beneficiaries.

• Ebooks are literally just getting started. An author would have to be a moron to fork over all international rights to one and only one publisher at this point in time, unless they only care about selling books in their own country.
• It takes more than five minutes to renegotiate contracts, especially since there are hundreds of thousands -- possibly millions -- of contracts to review and amend.
• India is a large and complicated market, with cultural sensitivities that will likely go right over the head of most non-Indians. For example, Richard Gere kissed a Bollywood actress on the cheek at an AIDS benefit in 2007, and riots ensued in numerous cities. Riots. Do you really think that a US publisher is going to successfully navigate that market?
• I hate to shock you with this, but... people in different nations speak different languages (gasp!). Someone has to pay for the translations, and decide where those resources are best allocated. A US or UK company may not have access to the best translators.
• As ebooks pick up steam, the availability problems will largely get resolved.

Sure, it'd be swell if all content could be distributed like the Web. But that's not an economic reality, as the Web is free (or to be specific, ad-supported) and books are not.

So basically, unless the entire planet decides to speak one language (Chinese perhaps?), adopts one single culture, standardizes on one currency (good luck with that), and harmonizes all sales tax laws, geo restrictions still make some sense and in particular benefit the authors.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

• I hate to shock you with this, but... people in different nations speak different languages (gasp!). Someone has to pay for the translations, and decide where those resources are best allocated. A US or UK company may not have access to the best translators.

But if they only want to buy translated books then it does not matter if English books are allowed to be sold to all non-Enlglish speaking countries.

Since English is the secondary official Language in India I assume there are a big market for English books. And that is the reason that it is important to have geographical restrictions since it is a big English market there so the author can make more money by signing different contracts.

In for example Sweden the English book market is so small it would not matter. Still we have problem buying English ebooks.

[thinkpad]

I should have been clearer that I was referring to books written in English. How does an author benefit when I'm not able to buy a book due to geo-restrictions?

This has been talked over before here at MR and a more sensible logic would in this case be to give rights per language not per country.

Once again I don't see the benefit on geo-restrictions for the author when it comes to e-books.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by thinkpadx

I should have been clearer that I was referring to books written in English. How does an author benefit when I'm not able to buy a book due to geo-restrictions?

This has been talked over before here at MR and a more sensible logic would in this case be to give rights per language not per country.

Once again I don't see the benefit on geo-restrictions for the author when it comes to e-books.

They get more money selling the rights to different publishers in different countries then selling a world wide right to one publisher.

[thinkpad]

Negotiating with a lot of different publishers takes time so by the time some publisher in my country is given the rights I have moved on to something different and the author has lost a customer.

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by thinkpadx

How does an author benefit when I'm not able to buy a book due to geo-restrictions?

This has been talked over before here at MR and a more sensible logic would in this case be to give rights per language not per country.

This scenario could actually work, but not in all cases.

If the author doesn't care about foreign sales, then it can make sense to assign international English ebook rights to one publisher. After that, it's up to the retailers to decide where they want to sell the ebooks.

However, this still leaves numerous issues on the retail level. For example, even clearing out the need of a foreign entity to have an Indian distributor, the retailer still has to deal with currency issues, sales taxes and international credit card processing. There can be all sorts of cultural and legal implications -- e.g. what happens to a retailer that sells an ebook of Salmon Rushdie's The Satanic Verses in Saudi Arabia?

These aren't deal-killers, but do raise the costs of doing business. We will likely need to wait until the international ebook market grows for anyone other than Amazon to really dig into this type of offering, and even then they may need to carefully supervise content for regional issues.


And to be a bit more explicit: One other reason why the authors benefit is because it's an indication that the publishers are actually abiding by their contracts. The only way this issue could truly be solved overnight would be for the publishers to violate the existing contracts en masse, and authorize international ebook sales without the author's permission. I don't see how the authors benefit from that kind of approach.

[thinkpad]

So basically the author could go and upload the book on Amazon and tell which regions it should be available to. All regions where the author hasn't already got a publishing agreement