The cost of books

Feb 03, 2010 11:10


Over on barbarienne's LJ, she's posted about a cadre of Kindle owners who are making claims that the big publishers don't want ebooks to succeed as a viable format for reading.  I leave it in her capable hands to debunk that nonsense.  However, one comment that I read there, and have seen elsewhere, drives me insane.

The comment is that "printing makes up ( Read more... )

publishing

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Comments 54

sinboy February 5 2010, 17:33:05 UTC
Thanks for posting this. Do you mind if I link to it on Genreville, which is Publishers Weekly's genre fiction blog?

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delkytlar February 5 2010, 17:57:37 UTC
Not at all. Thanks.

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masgramondou February 6 2010, 14:27:20 UTC
I came here from Robotech_master's teleread post. I just posted a comment there which probably deserves to be seen here too:

Apart from - literally - a dozen or so exceptions I have bought all of my ebooks from Baen. I have of course got a load of free ones too - from Baen, PG etc. etc ( ... )

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robotech_master February 6 2010, 18:25:25 UTC
The TeleRead post in question being this one. Just realized I forgot to link it here. :)

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delkytlar February 7 2010, 20:02:57 UTC
With regard to the issue you refer to as your being "foreign", from what I can tell from your Profile, you live in France. On that basis, you have to understand that authors only license certain territorial rights to certain publishers. It would be great if U.S. publishers could obtain "World" rights in all of our books, but we can't. If there are separate U.S. and U.K. editions of the book. the U.K. publisher usually gets the European rights. Therefore, the U.S. publisher is legally prohibited from selling to customers in those countries. We have to pass that limitation on to our customers and suppliers. (Yes, some online bookstores and ebook sellers will sell to customers outside of the authorized territories. By doing so, they are committing copyright infringement, and opening themselves up to lawsuits by the rights holders ( ... )

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masgramondou February 7 2010, 21:32:50 UTC
Interspersing my replies. I hope this doesn't come across as too confrontational.

It would be great if U.S. publishers could obtain "World" rights in all of our books, but we can't. If there are separate U.S. and U.K. editions of the book. the U.K. publisher usually gets the European rights. Therefore, the U.S. publisher is legally prohibited from selling to customers in those countries. We have to pass that limitation on to our customers and suppliers.This is a great example of how/why the current publishing model is broken. As a reader, I don't care about the geographic rights thing. This is, bluntly, not my problem except for the fact that it stops my buying the (e)books I want. I don't think the author minds whether I buy a copy of his work from his US publisher or his UK one (assuming the two are different), he just wants a sale and a royalty. Given that most publishers are now multinational entities (Macmillan being owned by a German company for example) the geographic rights issue is just a roadblock that makes it harder for ( ... )

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kellymccullough February 7 2010, 02:17:28 UTC
Nicely done. Will be linking with my next post on the subject. Thanks!

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delkytlar February 7 2010, 20:03:43 UTC
Thank you. I'm glad that the dialogue on this topic continues. It can only be helpful to the industry.

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onnamante December 11 2010, 09:10:50 UTC
The Google books online library may eventually change all these since virtually everybody would be able to publish his work without the help of an editor.
Global Visas

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delkytlar January 11 2011, 15:47:51 UTC
Not at all a prospect I welcome. The last thing the book world needs is a lot of unedited work adding to the already bewildering array of books available. Considering the vast array of garbage that gets submitted to publishers as slush, or published by vanity presses, it is clear that the literary world still needs professional editors, copyeditors and other gatekeepers. Not to mention that anyone publishing any remotely risky work without a publisher's insurance to back them up in a litigation is risking a significant financial loss from lawsuits.

Sorry, but I just don't think self-publishing is a good strategy for anything but the least risky books, or books with real small audiences (family memoirs, etc.).

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