Amazon pursuing me for buying US books outside of USA

[pietvo]

Originally Posted by ATimson

However, by splitting the print rights, they also split the ebook rights.

Not necessarily. Splitting print rights makes sense because distributing print books is geographical by nature. But distributing ebooks is global by nature. So authors can selling the rights for ebooks separately without geographics restrictions because they make less sense. But I think most authors are not aware of the issues because they still live in the 20th century on these matters (as probably also agents and publishers). Time to teach them!

[tompe]

Originally Posted by pietvo

Not necessarily. Splitting print rights makes sense because distributing print books is geographical by nature

You just hire a local printer so this is not the relevant factor. The relevant things are targetting the market and things like adapting the language if necessary.

[pietvo]

Agent Kristin has an interesting blog post on this subject. There are also several comments by angry readers. (Mentioned by Teleread)

[bevdeforges]

Originally Posted by markbond1007

I agree its silly but...

What I havent seen answered is the question of taxes.

I mean if a sale is considered to be the location of the buyer (and this applies to all "software" - how anyone can class an ebook as software I dont know but there you go). So ignoring the actual ability to buy (or not) certain books, by classifying the sale as happening at the location of the purchaser, that surely means that the seller is responsible for taxes in whatever country/location the purchaser happens to be in for every individual sale. For larger companies (Apple/Amazon/etc) this is fine as they just re-direct to your local site and you make the purchase there and they file their taxes etc. How do smaller businesses deal with it? and presumably if the point of sale is at the purchasers location, then the seller doesnt have to pay sale taxes for that purchase at their current location either (must be a logistical/VAT/Sales Tax nightmare)!!

Mark

I think you've hit on the real issue here. The regional rights are a holdover from the print era, like lots of people have said. But what seems to be happening with e-book sales over the Internet is that many US sellers simply don't want to be bothered to try and figure out a way to deal with VAT and are using the regional rights as a handy umbrella excuse.

Software vendors online have managed to cope with this, but the regional rights issue just complicates things and I suspect most book sellers are just saying - oh the heck with it all, we only sell to those in our own region, where we sort of think we know how to cope with the tax stuff. The regional rights thing just becomes a convenient excuse.

It's odd because I've bought e-books from the Sony store in the US (using gift cards purchased by a friend in the US and using her address whenever asked for a "home" address), and Kobo has no problems selling to me in US$ using my US credit card with a French billing address. Waterstones sells to me on my UK credit card (with the same French billing address). Book prices in France are generally outrageous, with a law forbidding the discounting of book prices by more than 5%, so I have yet to be tempted by any e-books here in France. I don't bother with VPNs or anything fancy like that, so I assume all the book vendors know (or could easily find out) where I'm coming from.

[Kumabjorn]

Originally Posted by bevdeforges

Book prices in France are generally outrageous, with a law forbidding the discounting of book prices by more than 5%, so I have yet to be tempted by any e-books here in France.

Don't want to all here, but that comes as a huge surprise to me. Together with the Icelanders the French has always seemed to be very supportive of their culture and language. Making it harder for book sellers to sell books in the French language seems to fly in the face of that notion. Perhaps I'm mistaken, but comparing English and French translations of Japanese literature the French translation most often comes across as superior.

[NiLuJe]

And yet it's the sad, sad truth. And let's not start talking about the 19.6% VAT on eBooks vs. the 5.5% VAT on paper books... So, yeah, eBook prices in France are nuts. Hopefully that'll change for the better, but we're still way behind on the whole eBook thing for now...

And I can confirm, like bevdeforges, that Waterstones doesn't seem to enforce any geographic restrictions (for now?). I bought something there last week, with a french billing address and & french cc#, from a french IP.

[Pushka]

Originally Posted by pietvo

Agent Kristin has an interesting blog post on this subject. There are also several comments by angry readers. (Mentioned by Teleread)

Hmmm. I have to question the credibility of someone who thinks The Philippines is a US Territory and that the abbreviation of Australia can be combined with New Zealand and call them ANZ. Last time I looked they were all separate countries.

[thinkpad]

I liked this comment from an author on Agent Kristins blog:

As a writer, and being aware of this problem, I made sure, when I signed the deal for my book, that the publisher had world English rights. I urge other writers to talk to their agents and publishers and make sure their ebook is available around the world. As Francis said, readers don't give a damn about legalities or how much profit the publisher wants to make. As writers, we need to take some responsibility and make sure our readers can read our ebooks if they want them.

Now if more writers thought like this the problem would be minimal.

[Pushka]

Originally Posted by thinkpadx

I liked this comment from an author on Agent Kristins blog:


Now if more writers thought like this the problem would be minimal.

Except that most authors would authorise ebook distribution anyway, but the publishers dont follow through. They just want to retain the rights, just in case! My partner writes books; he authorised US and AUS ebook and dtb distribution a couple of years ago, but only the dtb has happened.

[thinkpad]

Originally Posted by Pushka

Except that most authors would authorise ebook distribution anyway, but the publishers dont follow through. They just want to retain the rights, just in case! My partner writes books; he authorised US and AUS ebook and dtb distribution a couple of years ago, but only the dtb has happened.

This I don't get. If a publisher doesn't follow through isn't this a breach of contract. By the way what's dtb distribution?

[nashira]

Originally Posted by thinkpadx

This I don't get. If a publisher doesn't follow through isn't this a breach of contract. By the way what's dtb distribution?

"Dead tree book", I believe.

[Pushka]

Originally Posted by thinkpadx

This I don't get. If a publisher doesn't follow through isn't this a breach of contract. By the way what's dtb distribution?

Only if the timing of distribution is written into the contract.

[pietvo]

Originally Posted by Pushka

Hmmm. I have to question the credibility of someone who thinks The Philippines is a US Territory and that the abbreviation of Australia can be combined with New Zealand and call them ANZ. Last time I looked they were all separate countries.

The fact that her geography isn't up to date doesn't mean that her writing about publishing is also defective. And maybe ANZ is a publisher's code for Australia/New Zealand?

[Pushka]

Originally Posted by pietvo

The fact that her geography isn't up to date doesn't mean that her writing about publishing is also defective. And maybe ANZ is a publisher's code for Australia/New Zealand?

I could agree with that if the topic had nothing to do with geographical issues Eg How to fix a car. But she is writing about copyright issues and geographical restrictions and thinks The Philippines is a USA territory. Hell, in some circles, statements like start wars!

As for the ANZ thing, in publishing circles AUS is also regarded as a separate entity in its own right and has separate copyright restrictions to NZ. New Zealanders aren't allowed access to the kindle for instance.

These are basic issues and knowledge of them is integral to her topic. Hence the lack of cred.

[bevdeforges]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

And I can confirm, like bevdeforges, that Waterstones doesn't seem to enforce any geographic restrictions (for now?). I bought something there last week, with a french billing address and & french cc#, from a french IP.

I suppose that, technically, those of us in France ARE in Waterstone's "region" - at least as far as English-language books are concerned.

But the thing that really hurts here in France is the law that forbids discounting on books (well, up to 5% only). It's why Amazon.fr offers free shipping on all books. Even most "popular" books in France, published in what I consider a paperback format, cost 20€ or so.