Should publishers buy worldright e-rights?

I'm all for this. Otherwise, I'll just keep buying erotica, since it's about the only kind of ebook that I can buy

Off-topic a bit, did you know that Kindle charges international buyers 2$ more for every book, even one that's supposed to be free? It's a tough life being international ebook reader.

I know exactly which threads you mean It's a bit of a toughie, because having banged my head against the wall of ebooks I can't buy, I'm baffled why anyone would think an epublisher that didn't ask for worldwide e rights was a good person to go with. Actively preventing your customers from buying your product is ridiculous. I get annoyed enough at site that only take US-available credit cards, since it means I have to pay by credit rather than debit, and I've abandoned more than a few sales on that basis too.

I think some of it comes from the fact a lot of epublishers take print rights too, 'just in case'. And obviously worldwide print rights without a distributor looks iffy. You wouldn't want to sign with a print pub that asked for that. As momento_mori said on one of the recent BR&BC threads, you're giving up the ability to sell the book yourself to overseas publishers for good money, and if you're going to do that you want to be really confident your current publisher can get you the sales overseas that they could. It's complicated by the fact that most print publishers want e-rights too now, so even if your epub doesn't want print rights, you're unlikely to be able to sell that book to a print publisher because the worldwide e-rights are already gone.

But then, if you've written a book you've sold to an epub, it's almost certainly not the kind of book you could have sold to a print pub. Distribution is going to be entirely online. If it's entirely online, you want to make sure that every person who can see that book has the option to buy it. Otherwise, it's like a print publisher telling bookshops they can sell their books - face out to attract lots of lovely shoppers, with all kinds of exciting discounts and other promotions - but only to people who are wearing red jackets, because the publisher only bought "red jacket" rights. People in blue jackets can look, but cannot buy, unless someone with a red jacket deigns to make copies of the book and share them around. Hmm...

Print, for epublishers, is basically another format. Kindle, epub, print, pdf... You're giving customers the option of buying it in the format of their choosing. And you want to offer it to all your customers, not just the geographically convenient, because otherwise you're back to that bookshop analogy, except people in blue jackets can buy the hardcover but not the paperback.

So, um, yes. I think epublishers absolutely should buy worldwide e-rights. Whether they should buy worldwide print rights is up for debate, and I suspect very much depends on both the book and the publisher. There's no point hanging on to them when you have a book you couldn't sell to a print publisher anyway. And I'm beginning to get a little tired of the same argument being trotted out every time a new epub appears, especially when it's usually a long way from being the worst thing in the contract.

This is something I hadn't thought about. I have published on Kindle, and remember checking that I wanted international distribution-so can I assume this means that someone with a Kindle can buy my book from anywhere in the world? I also have my book up on Smashwords-but don't know if anyone from outside of US can buy from that site. Does anyone know the answer to this? I did run into someone mentioning that they had to pay more money for my 99cent short story on Kindle because they are in Canada-so I guess that is the $2 fee for being out of US customer-which is outrageous.

Since publishing on Kindle is non exclusive, it doesn't preclude me publishing book in another format-so I don't see how it would limit my rights to let it be distributed internationally. Any thoughts on this?

If they are going to contract digital rights they should be world rights. The question is more if the are going to contract rights they will not or cannot use--like print rights, audio, translation etc.

mlouisalocke said:

Since publishing on Kindle is non exclusive, it doesn't preclude me publishing book in another format-so I don't see how it would limit my rights to let it be distributed internationally. Any thoughts on this?

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It sounds like you've done it yourself, so as long as you haven't signed anything that says "you may only publish this book through Kindle and in Kindle format" you should be fine. It would be a different matter if you signed with a publisher that said "we're only going to publish through Kindle, but we're taking digital, print, audio and movie rights so you can't even get the book optioned, let alone consider selling it in epub".

Off-topic a bit, did you know that Kindle charges international buyers 2$ more for every book, even one that's supposed to be free? It's a tough life being international ebook reader.

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I haven't specifically noticed that, but we get charged VAT on ebooks in the UK, officially. Of course, I tend to buy direct from the publishers, who don't always take into account different tax laws in different parts of the world in their pricing*. If I purchased through Amazon I'd suffer not only under the £:$ thing** but I'd have to pay 17.5% (soon to be 20%) on top.


*And since nothing's being physically shipped, customs can't slap a fee on it and then expect me to have £5.67 in exact change when the parcel turns up on my doorstep, without even a warning as to what day it's being delivered or how much it's going to be.

**You often find something priced as, say, $6 is also priced as £6 here, even though $6 is £4.50. Higher cost of living and all that.

I think the whole market needs to be remodelled. It's one thing if the author is tiny and unknown. Then it doesn't matter. But it doesn't take much volume until it becomes an issue. Right now launches are made country by country, targeted marketing and so forth. Local publishers are better at knowing what works in the home market. This model needs to change somehow before selling world wide rights become practical.

If I'm to speculate wildly, I think in the future e-rights and e-books will be handled and sold by a completely separate gang of publishers than the ones for physical books. Both are so tied to their medium that they suck at hawking the other type. That's at least the vibe I'm getting.

I assumed that +2$ charge for international customers is for the 'free' Kindle wifi. But the outrageous thing is that, even if you didn't use Kindle to purchase the book, (there's Kindle desktop client, for example,) you still have to pay 2$ more than what US customer would pay, per book, including what you should have gotten for free.

I'm surprised that no one seemed to know or talk about this.