Hachette Book Group causing major hassles

[Lemurion]

Hachette wants to sell to everyone - but they want not to be sued more.

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by Liviu_5

Why then do they not sue/pull their books from BD or Amazon.uk for selling to non-UK customers, or Amazon.com for selling outside US??

The above justification just does not hold water. The reason in this specific case (Hachette) is that US e-book vendors sell lower than the UK ones, so the UK ones complained.

Yes, Hachette pulled them because the UK sellers complained. However, the reason Hachette responded to the complaints in the way they did is because the UK sellers could point to the contracts Hachette had signed and say they were in breach of contract. Hachette gets paid either way (whether through UK subsidiary or US) so without the contractual hammer they would not have taken as extreme an action as pulling all their books from all US ebook sellers.

They pulled the books because they could have been sued.

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

Yes, Hachette pulled them because the UK sellers complained.

I have fairly often seen a "US only" banner on ebooks at US ebook stores, but I have never seen a "no US" banner (or any region restriction) at a UK ebook store. I have certainly done more shopping in the US stores, in part because many UK ebooks are Adobe-only, so perhaps I missed them. I guess the best hunting ground would be the same book sold in the UK and the US by Hachette houses.

Has anyone seen regional restriction notices, or been prevented from buying an ebook because of where they live, at a UK ebook store?

[tech_au]

There's an update to the controversy at teleread but it does appear that the UK resellers have been slamming the Paris based sister company Hachette Livre about price imbalances between the UK and US and naturally plenty of UK people have been buying from US reseller.
Don't expect to buy any Hachette titles in the US in mobi, lit or ereader for awhile, at least until the resellers cowtow to Hachette's blackmail anyway

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

Has anyone seen regional restriction notices, or been prevented from buying an ebook because of where they live, at a UK ebook store?

Not at a UK bookstore, but MobiPocket in France certainly have region blocking in place.

[June]

Originally Posted by HarryT

--- BoB (or any other eBook store) are NOT "buying books up front" from Ingram, Mobi, etc. - they don't have a "stock" of books which they've paid for and are waiting to sell to you. The transaction is only carried out at the time that the customer buys the book, and it's done directly by Ingram, Mobi, etc, via the BoB (or whatever) server. BoB then pays commission to the distributer for the transaction. ie it's a "direct sale". That is why, for example, you can't buy a Mobi book if Mobi's server is down at the time.

Warning - random thought-stream/ramblings follows:

This got me thinking... do I as a consumer then enter into agreement (buy from) BoB or from someone else? I'd imagine that the consumer is entering into a contract (buying from) BoB. The buyer can't be entering into a contract with Ingram/whomever without even knowing it? Who charges the buyer's credit card, BoB or someone else? What if I buy books from different publishers at once from once 'e-bookstore' - am I then entering into simultaneous contracts with various publishers for the book/license?

In short: is it correct to place the consumer in a different position than when buying a paper book from the same place, when the transaction for all practicalities "looks/feels" the same to the buyer? The buyer's experience is identical: choose a book from list of available titles, place it in the shopping basket, check out and pay, receive the book.

This similarity is what is good and bad. Good as in it puts ebooks and paperbooks in a similar position. Bad in that the legalities (licence vs. product) differ.

AND then let's not forget the different legislation regarding 'fair personal use', and that some courts (in some countries) have ruled that a consumer is not always bound by a 'routine license agreement' depending on how and when it's presented.

Hopefully things will get more clear with time... one can always hope. It is very annoying to want to buy a certain book in ebook format, and not be able to find it at all, or if you find it it's not available for you to buy.

[pepak]

Originally Posted by HarryT

You may not like it, but that is the way that the publishing industry works, and it's not going to change in a hurry.

This was pretty much the position of movie industry back when movies were released years apart in different regions, not all that long ago. I expect the book publishers will take the lesson from pirates the hard way, too.

[BuddyBoy]

I would actually love to see something like this go to court. The whole problem lies in the interpretation of the region of sale. Some authors and foreign retailers want the region to be defined as the home region or billing region of the purchaser. US retailers and book purchasers understandably prefer that the region be defined based on the location of the merchant.

Harry, I disagree with you about whom is doing the selling - I purchase directly from my ebook retailers. My credit card is charged by fictionwise or sony or bob, not little brown or mcgraw-hill. The retailer may be "purchasing" the rights and the distribution quota from the distributor (lightening, overdrive, etc) seconds before my sale is fully consummated, but nonetheless, I would suspect a reasonable court would define the retail seller as fictionwise, for example, not little brown.

Given the precedence with retail bookshops, I can't see a court then arguing that a sale made by a US ebookstore, to a user vacationing in Australia, with a credit card addressed in Poland should be governed under the jurisdiction of Poland, for example.

The rationale for the current brou-ha-ha has nothing to do with author's rights - were any author to bring suit they would be very unsure of a verdict in their favor. This contretemps is all about greed - foreign regional retailers being undercut by US eretailers throwing up the specter of a lawsuit, unwinnable or not, and the publisher folds.

Like I said, I'd love to see this go to court.

[Diesel eBooks]

It's Diesel eBooks position that ebooks by their very nature operate in a global marketplace and this is a step backward. In our discussions with Hachette they pointed to contractual complexities as an issue here, but good news is that this may not be permanent. It took some quick development work, but we have met their geographic restrictions for all four of our formats: Microsoft Reader, Adobe, e-Reader/palm and Mobipocket.

Countries limited are below:
United States
Virgin Islands
Canada
Philippines
Puerto Rico
US Minor Outlying Islands

Scott Redford
President
Diesel eBooks

[sianon]

Originally Posted by Diesel eBooks

It's Diesel eBooks position that ebooks by their very nature operate in a global marketplace and this is a step backward. In our discussions with Hachette they pointed to contractual complexities as an issue here, but good news is that this may not be permanent. It took some quick development work, but we have met their geographic restrictions for all four of our formats: Microsoft Reader, Adobe, e-Reader/palm and Mobipocket.

Countries limited are below:
United States
Virgin Islands
Canada
Philippines
Puerto Rico
US Minor Outlying Islands

Scott Redford
President
Diesel eBooks

Scott, are you suggesting that territorial restrictions may in fact be removed at some time in the near future.

[Diesel eBooks]

It's not my call to make, but that is my impression. Hachette understands the world is flat and nobody wants to walk away from potential revenue or alienate customers/authors. Somebody needs to hammer out a deal.

Scott Redford
[Promotion deleted - MODERATOR]

[sianon]

It seems like the situation may have been resolved. I logged on to my BooksonBoard account this morning and all books are now available for download. Likewise with Fictionwise.

Karen

[Diesel eBooks]

Karen, stop by when you get a chance. Better yet everybody stop by - here's a coupon in honor of Karen for all Mobileread visitors good for 25% off until next Wednesday the 24th.

Just use this code at checkout:

comebykaren

Scott Redford
[Promotion deleted - MODERAT0R]

[Alfy]

I, for one, find this whole story very worrisome. I live in France but read in English, and getting my books has always been a hassle and an expensive endeavour. For the first time in my life, I can purchase books from the US, at a much nicer price than getting them ordered from amazon.uk (pretty much the only other alternative). I hope I'm not going to have to take a step backward. I already have to purchase some ebooks from UK stores just because of availability, and I feel everytime I spend 9£ instead of 7$...

[Snowman]

When I got bitten last week by the Hachette 'Geographically Correct' bug (I'm in the UK, and the books I wanted appear to be US/Canada only), I spent some time searching for a non-US retailer for them, just for the hell of it, and also to see what price differences there would be.

And found none. No other seller at all. I started with Google, and then worked through some of the likely retailers sites. Nothing. I even looked around Hachette for links, with no success.

Which means that Hachette and any other publisher implementing similar restrictions - whether mandated by contract or no - is not simply switching income from one source to another, but is actually losing the sale for the book completely. And if the book forms part of a series, then there will also be the loss of income the whole series

Also, doing an extensive search is not something I am likely to do very often, if at all. *Shrugs* There are a lot of other books that I want to read without my having to jump through hoops.

Snowman