List of georestricting publishers

[RobbieClarken]

Originally Posted by sirbruce

The author isn't going to be the one to sue; it's going to be the distributor who bought the Canadian distribution rights and now finds the American distributor is selling ebooks in Canada. They're going to sue the American distributor AND the author.

Not necessarily true. The Australian government has been looking at reforming laws restricting parallel importation of books to allow greater competition from foreign publishers. Many Australian authors came out in opposition to this as they profit from restricting the choices of Australian readers.

[Blue Tyson]

Right, we are egregiously gouged. We even pay the same for a book printed down the road, as one flown in from New York.

The fact remains for all the legal jargon, publishing contracts, author protectionism, etc. the general consumer does not care, not should they. If defenders of such have to write an 8 page justification of it, even worse.

There was one of the linked publishing industry articles saying they put out way too many books - so if half the authors/books went away, who'd notice? Barring in the case it being your favorite, etc.

The option that has multinationals sueing each other into oblivion sounds like fun, though.

Any regional sales discrimination and price gouging guarantees more file sharing, of course. In fact, people will go out of their way to do it more, because they are annoyed.
Books are harder to get for free than movies and tv and cost a lot more than comics and are sold in pathetic numbers in comparison, and there are astronomical numbers of different titles. So probably unlikely to see organised 0-day (or week, or month, more realistically) ripping groups in the same manner, but it will grow.

If you do have to fake your address, and jump through hoops to get stuff, it does make a certain risk management economic sense to get yourself a distributed-world backup of your book that cannot be taken away by the shutting down of access, servers, or changing conditions in the case of the crappy DRM infested versions, at least.

[Blue Tyson]

Originally Posted by Xenophon

X. [*] Cons: This approach is certain to get them into multiple lawsuits. And at least a few of those lawsuits would be expensive ones. Further, it will tend to give them a reputation for violating their publishing contracts. And that negative reputation would really interfere with their ability to do business generally, acquire new books to sell, negotiate with authors and agents, etc.[*]Pros: Get their feet wet with electronic sales now. Make sense of the contractual issues over time. Avoid sullying business reputation.
Xenophon

The author part of your Con - most authors have little choice in the matter, and the majority of them are super desperate to sell. There is a never ending ever-increasing supply of this lot.

All the major publishers and media conglomerates have horribly sullied reputations already, DRM, lawsuits, etc. Not to mention financial fun and games.

They are delusional if they think they don't. Unless you mean only with each other? Insular thinking like that wouldn't surprise. See that Doctorow secret treaties article from today.

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by Blue Tyson

The author part of your Con - most authors have little choice in the matter, and the majority of them are super desperate to sell. There is a never ending ever-increasing supply of this lot.

Perhaps so. But we certainly have an existence proof of popular authors jumping ship over smaller issues than reliability of their publisher. For example because they don't agree with the ebook policy.

Originally Posted by Blue Tyson

All the major publishers and media conglomerates have horribly sullied reputations already, DRM, lawsuits, etc. Not to mention financial fun and games.

They are delusional if they think they don't. Unless you mean only with each other? Insular thinking like that wouldn't surprise. See that Doctorow secret treaties article from today.

So... given their existing contracts, what are they supposed to do?

It's lots of fun to excoriate them as bad guys and idiots. It's much harder to make constructive proposals. What's YOUR great idea? How will you cut the gordian knot?

Xenophon

[Blue Tyson]

Originally Posted by Xenophon

Perhaps so. But we certainly have an existence proof of popular authors jumping ship over smaller issues than reliability of their publisher. For example because they don't agree with the ebook policy.

So... given their existing contracts, what are they supposed to do?

It's lots of fun to excoriate them as bad guys and idiots. It's much harder to make constructive proposals. What's YOUR great idea? How will you cut the gordian knot?

Xenophon

Not like they haven't had YEARS to deal with that. Current stupid contracts their own doing. CEOS etc. are supposed to be forward-looking and strategic, it is why the pay the tossers the big bucks.

Firing a whole bunch of the people at the top a while back, or at least get rid of them now, given they were clearly lacking in the necessary vision.

Renegotiation doesn't exist in their language or world? Non-exclusivity? Not rocket science, here. A couple of the latter mightn't hurt at the top levels of publishing, though.

Failing that, if you are the Americans - you could just start grabbing the whole enchilada, perhaps. Want to be sold in the USA? Do this, or go away. They have the clout, they do it in other arenas, so not sure why they play nicey-nice when they could sell directly to everybody.

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by Blue Tyson

Not like they haven't had YEARS to deal with that. Current stupid contracts their own doing. CEOS etc. are supposed to be forward-looking and strategic, it is why the pay the tossers the big bucks.

Firing a whole bunch of the people at the top a while back, or at least get rid of them now, given they were clearly lacking in the necessary vision.

Years? A very few of the very most forward-looking publishers started thinking about these issues 10 years ago. More got into the game starting not much more than about 5 years ago. I guess that counts as "years."

As for CEOs being forward-looking and strategic, sure. Some have even taken action in forward-looking ways. Consider for example the (new) CEO of Holtzbrinck -- which owns MacMillan, which owns Tor. Tor and Baen made a deal to put Tor's books up on Baen's Webscriptions site -- the deal was negotiated at Tor's level, approved at MacMillan, and then shot down by senior management at Holtzbrinck. Fast-forward 15 months, and Holtzbrinck's new CEO asked all divisions to explain what they were doing to remain relevant over the next 30 years. Tor responded by describing the shot-down deal, with the result that it's now back on and in the works ("Real Soon Now", whenever that is). Is that strategic enough for you? It certainly involved firing several of the people who were previously at the top (not, however, as a result of that particular deal).

Originally Posted by Blue Tyson

Renegotiation doesn't exist in their language or world? Non-exclusivity? Not rocket science, here. A couple of the latter mightn't hurt at the top levels of publishing, though.

Ah... I see! You're recommending that they follow either option #2 or #3 from my list in this prior post. Meanwhile, you're assuming that they are following either option #4 or #0 (the just ignore the whole thing with head-in-the-sand approach)... based on which evidence, exactly? And you're choosing to do it with public namecalling and bad language. This brings to mind an old folk-saying about flies, honey, and vinegar. Perhaps you may wish to reconsider your approach.

Part of the point I was trying to make is that you're tarring publishers in general with a very broad brush. There's no need to invoke any evil intention or poor business practices or even general cluelessness to explain the current mess. In fact, it would be quite possible to wind up where we are even if every publisher and publishing executive was a totally well meaning guy/gal who's solidly on the side of the angels and loves all humanity -- not that I believe that's an accurate description of all publishing executives and publishing companies.

Originally Posted by Blue Tyson

Failing that, if you are the Americans - you could just start grabbing the whole enchilada, perhaps. Want to be sold in the USA? Do this, or go away. They have the clout, they do it in other arenas, so not sure why they play nicey-nice when they could sell directly to everybody.

Just to make my position clear: I hate regional restrictions, and I wish they would go away! While I'm at it, I also wish that all publishers would go the Baen route of low prices, no DRM, no regional restrictions, and solid and honest up-front dealings with their authors, agents, readers, etc. (Of course, I also want world peace, the end of hunger and global warming, lots of money from the tooth fairy, and a pony! )

Meanwhile, back in the real world, I also understand that publishers and authors face an overhang of existing contracts that they must cope with. And that renegotiating contracts requires time and attention, and costs money -- and because time attention and money are not infinitely available, even a well-meaning publisher must make choices about how to proceed. And those choices are more complicated than "don't those fucktards know anything?"

Meanwhile, what do you suggest that authors and agents do to help clean up the current mess? Again, I'm looking for realistic (or at least plausible) concrete suggestions, not overheated rhetoric. Use AgentY and BigBestseller as a way to illustrate your proposed approach. How should AgentY proceed? While you think about it, remember that he has a fiduciary duty to his client (the author) to attempt to get the best business outcome possible for the client.

Can you tell I'm an academic who is used to posing homework problems? But I digress yet again...

Xenophon

[Blue Tyson]

BigBestseller?

Depends who, perhaps. If I was Stephen King, I'd possibly be considering keeping all electronic rights for myself, and selling to whoever I wanted to.

Rowling's agent somehow needs to beat some sense into her, although of course she has enough money to do whatever crazy she wants.

In fact, if there were a group of authors like this peeved with publishing they could go their own way, electronically. That's possibly what makes them the most money on that part. That means they get all the money, minus whatever expenses and bookshop cuts if they wanted to sell at Fictionwise, Amazon, etc.

'Started thinking about' does not equal action, or competent corporate management.

There were 9 year old kids that did the same thing, the thinking about.

Asking nicely hasn't worked, nor simple explanation.

Neither has a bunch of smart people giving them advice. Some more lambasting earlier might have been good for them.

The Tor example is a good case study of executive incompetence as far as their corporate masters, certainly! 3 years later...

How many industries take years to get small deals done like that, in general?

[Blue Tyson]

'Experimentation' and 'trial', weren't in their repertoire, either, speaking of science.

[Barcey]

I understand the problems with existing contracts but if publishers and authors are writing new contracts in 2009 that don't recognize electronic book rights as work wide rights without geographical restrictions then I agree they belong on a wall of shame.

[hannah]

I didn't read the whole thread but I often wondered, why, in this geographic restrictions problem for publishers, they didn't include one big ebook-internet in the lists of "countries".

Countries have boundaries, but not selling ebooks to some people on the internet because they don't live at the right place is silly, when you can actually do it for paperbooks (amazon). So why don't they sell the rights for internet/ebooks next to the geographic rights ?
Seems logic for me...

hannah

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by Blue Tyson

BigBestseller?

Depends who, perhaps. If I was Stephen King, I'd possibly be considering keeping all electronic rights for myself, and selling to whoever I wanted to.

Rowling's agent somehow needs to beat some sense into her, although of course she has enough money to do whatever crazy she wants.

I must admit that I had assumed a moderately lower level of bestseller than King or Rowling. They -- along with a very few other authors -- are special cases because they sell so extremely well that they can dictate to publishers, rather than the other way around. I was thinking of the next notch down of bestseller -- the folks who regularly hit the bestseller lists and are certainly well-known authors, but who aren't selling multiple-million copies in hardcover for every new book. You know, the top 1% or .5% of authors, not the top 10 authors. Obviously I should have said so.

Originally Posted by Blue Tyson

In fact, if there were a group of authors like this peeved with publishing they could go their own way, electronically. That's possibly what makes them the most money on that part. That means they get all the money, minus whatever expenses and bookshop cuts if they wanted to sell at Fictionwise, Amazon, etc.

For authors who are not at the absolute top of publishing, getting their electronic rights back is nearly impossible. It does happen, but it's extremely rare. It seems that bean-counters prefer to hold on to rights they aren't using -- and may not even have a plan to use! -- rather than to give or sell those rights back to an author who plans to actually use them.

Originally Posted by Blue Tyson

[SNIP a bit]
Asking nicely hasn't worked, nor simple explanation.

Neither has a bunch of smart people giving them advice. Some more lambasting earlier might have been good for them.

The Tor example is a good case study of executive incompetence as far as their corporate masters, certainly! 3 years later...

Asking nicely, simple explanation, advice, and lambasting have yet to be tried in the venues where they might actually have some effect. Remember -- we readers are not the customers that the publishers have to worry about. They must be concerned first with the corporate buyers for the big bookstores and for Amazon -- readers come after that. The proper venue for asking, and explaining, and the rest is inside the publishing industry -- at conferences and business meetings, in industry trade magazines, in author and agent groups (can you say Writer's Guild or SFWA?), and such places. Fussing on the net, or at enthusiast web-sites, or even in the general press is essentially invisible. It sucks, but that's the way it is.

As for the Tor example, it certainly was a good case study of executive incompetence. And that incompetence appears to have been addressed (mostly) by Holtzbrinck's new senior management.

Originally Posted by Blue Tyson

How many industries take years to get small deals done like that, in general?

It happens all over the place. Even in the tech industry. In fact, small deals often take longer than large ones.

Xenophon

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by hannah

I didn't read the whole thread but I often wondered, why, in this geographic restrictions problem for publishers, they didn't include one big ebook-internet in the lists of "countries".

Countries have boundaries, but not selling ebooks to some people on the internet because they don't live at the right place is silly, when you can actually do it for paperbooks (amazon). So why don't they sell the rights for internet/ebooks next to the geographic rights ?
Seems logic for me...

hannah

Some publishers (e.g. Baen + a few others) insist on non-exclusive world-wide ebook rights. A few more insist on exclusive world-wide ebook rights.

The problem with both of these positions is that in many cases authors and their agents have already sold exclusive ebook rights in some parts of the world. If those rights have only been sold in one region, they can try to get that publisher to buy world-wide rights instead. If more than one region, it's time to negotiate non-exclusive world-wide rights.

My general attitude is that publishers, agents and authors should all be thinking in terms of non-exclusive world-wide rights. It just makes the most sense for all concerned. The problem is how to get there from here...

Xenophon