Apple's struggle to defeat Amazon set to be exposed by European ebook inquiry

[Quexos]

That is strange, why would any given author want to limit the sales of their books by selling it in one country and not another ?

Originally Posted by HarryT

Georestrictions are mostly the author's fault, not the publisher. If the publisher only has the legal right to sell the book is a particular region, they would be liable to being sued for breach of contract if they were to sell it elsewhere.

Blame the author for not granting the publisher world-wide rights.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Quexos

That is strange, why would any given author want to limit the sales of their books by selling it in one country and not another ?

Because until very recently, ebook sales have been an insignificant part of an author's income, and selling regionally restricted print rights (with regionally restricted ebook rights as a bundle) made the author more money. Giving one publisher regional print rights but world ebook rights might have prevented lucrative sales of print rights in other places.

Hopefully this will be changing, but it'll be a long process.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Georestrictions are mostly the author's fault, not the publisher. If the publisher only has the legal right to sell the book is a particular region, they would be liable to being sued for breach of contract if they were to sell it elsewhere.

Blame the author for not granting the publisher world-wide rights.

Do you mean they should give away world rights for free when they can sell the non-world rights and get more money? Authors have been willing to grant world wide rights if they have got paid for it. So I would say it is the publisher that should be blamed if anybody should be blamed.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by tompe

Do you mean they should give away world rights for free when they can sell the non-world rights and get more money? Authors have been willing to grant world wide rights if they have got paid for it. So I would say it is the publisher that should be blamed if anybody should be blamed.

The problem is, which publisher has the reach to promote a book worldwide? If authors give all the rights to an American publisher, then people in other places might never hear about the book.

And in Europe many countries have official price fixing for books, that would be finished. US sellers (who generally are the cheapest) would also have to start collecting taxes (sales tax or VAT) for people living in different countries. You must know European governments, they will hold on to every cent of tax revenue until you pry it from their cold dead hands.

It is not as easy as it sounds. Amazon really is the only one who could do it, and even they have separate stores in many countries with different prices for the same book in English.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Quexos

That is strange, why would any given author want to limit the sales of their books by selling it in one country and not another ?

Quite simply "money". An author can get more money by signing with, say, a separate US and UK publisher, than by giving US and UK rights to a single publisher. Eg, they'll get a separate advance from each publisher.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Because until very recently, ebook sales have been an insignificant part of an author's income, and selling regionally restricted print rights (with regionally restricted ebook rights as a bundle) made the author more money. Giving one publisher regional print rights but world ebook rights might have prevented lucrative sales of print rights in other places.

Hopefully this will be changing, but it'll be a long process.

Naturally, it's weird when an author does sell in a certain country in one form using a certain publisher, but you can't buy the other form from that same publisher in that same country...


Which proves, those rights are a mess...

[Quexos]

Unfortunately this means the interest of the author and those of the reader are no longer the same. This sheds new light on the moral grounds for piracy IMO.
If the author (or publishers) fight for their rights and their interests, the reader or consumer has the moral right to fight for his own rights and if any given book is not available due to artificial reasons such as geo-restrictions, this is not the consumer's problem and he/she is morally (for lack of "legally") entitled to fight for his right to read any given book by whatever means available (again IMO)

Originally Posted by HarryT

Quite simply "money". An author can get more money by signing with, say, a separate US and UK publisher, than by giving US and UK rights to a single publisher. Eg, they'll get a separate advance from each publisher.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Quite simply "money". An author can get more money by signing with, say, a separate US and UK publisher, than by giving US and UK rights to a single publisher. Eg, they'll get a separate advance from each publisher.

Originally Posted by Quexos

Unfortunately this means the interest of the author and those of the reader are no longer the same. This sheds new light on the moral grounds for piracy IMO.
If the author (or publishers) fight for their rights and their interests, the reader or consumer has the moral right to fight for his own rights and if any given book is not available due to artificial reasons such as geo-restrictions, this is not the consumer's problem and he/she is morally (for lack of "legally") entitled to fight for his right to read any given book by whatever means available (again IMO)

What you're describing here isn't the situation where the author has separate publishers. But what if the author doesn't care whether all of his publishers in total have world-wide coverage?

There are books that I am not allowed to buy from the UK and not from the US. Why? I'd have thought at least that the UK publisher would also cover all non-English speaking EU countries. But apparently this is not so. Then who does hold the rights for those countries, as often I'm also not allowed to buy those books from the US publishers...

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Quexos

Unfortunately this means the interest of the author and those of the reader are no longer the same.

No, they have never been the same. Authors want to make money. Readers want great books for free.

This sheds new light on the moral grounds for piracy IMO.

Stealing is okay because authors shouldn't make money? That's not what I would call a "moral" ground for piracy.

If the author (or publishers) fight for their rights and their interests, the reader or consumer has the moral right to fight for his own rights and if any given book is not available due to artificial reasons such as geo-restrictions, this is not the consumer's problem and he/she is morally (for lack of "legally") entitled to fight for his right to read any given book by whatever means available (again IMO)

There is no right to read any given book by whatever means available. None. You aren't allowed to steal from an author because "I want, I want, I want."

[CommonReader]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

And in Europe many countries have official price fixing for books, that would be finished. US sellers (who generally are the cheapest) would also have to start collecting taxes (sales tax or VAT) for people living in different countries. You must know European governments, they will hold on to every cent of tax revenue until you pry it from their cold dead hands.

I don't see it that way. The European book market is mainly separated into language regions. There is the German language market that covers Germany Austria, the main part of Switzerland and parts of some adjoining countries, The French market with France and parts of Switzerland and Belgium, the Italian market with Italy and parts of Switzerland and the English market with the UK and Ireland. Usually one publisher serves all the European markets for one book in one language. So one publisher will sell a given book in all German language markets, irrespective whether he is located . While there are usually some price differences in these markets they are so small that the publisher could set one price for all of them. The prices of the Swiss market would have to be tied to the € markets. Not trivial but doable.
There is no reason why the British publishers shouldn't be able to service the whole European market for the English version of a book. Prices would effectively have to be tied to the GBP. No reason to admit US sellers into the market on an equal footing.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by CommonReader

There is no reason why the British publishers shouldn't be able to service the whole European market for the English version of a book. Prices would effectively have to be tied to the GBP. No reason to admit US sellers into the market on an equal footing.

Unless you want to see tariffs put on foreign publishers in the US, of course.

[CommonReader]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Unless you want to see tariffs put on foreign publishers in the US, of course.

I care much less about this than about an open market within the EU. Most large publishers will publish in the US through their US subsidiaries anyway.

[Freeshadow]

There is the German language market that covers Germany Austria, the main part of Switzerland and parts of some adjoining countries,

you sure about it?

we have a heap of threads on MR discussing differences of english in the regions it is currently used.
things like this happen to other languages too