RicDay on Publishing

The issue of geographic restraints on ebook sales popped up again last night, as well it should. Restricting sales of digital files by geography is so dumb, it is risable.

I wrote about this back in 2008 (article here). Nothing has changed, except there are more publishers selling ebooks today. Almost all the ebooks on sale commercially are offered with tight geographic constraints, such as “okay to buy in America, not in Canada”.

English is a global language — perhaps the global language. Music is also global. I can open iTunes and buy a track or an album by Fernando Lima, or Teresa Teng, or Máire Brennan and not worry that the musician is from the Argentine, or Taiwan, or Éire. I won't get a “not for sale in your country” message, but I will pay my money and download the music to enjoy.

If I try the same with an ebook by an author who is not published in the US or Canada, odds are about 99 to 1 that I will get the stupid, infuriating, “not available for sale…” message.

I have lived in various countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, and North America. I’ve visited well over 100 countries, many of them multiple times. Those experiences have led me to an interest in music and writing from many places. I can maintain my music interests, but not (legally) my reading interests.

Which leads me to Shawn Fanning.

Back in the dark ages at the turn of this century, music publishers were resisting digital, selling DRM-laden CDs at ludicrous prices, and were horrified when Napster surfaced. I was ecstatic. In a matter of months, I was able to find and download music which I could not find in my local music superstores, or persuade them to order for me (I tried). Once DRM-free music became available at a reasonable price, I did what I suspect few of my Napster cohort even thought about — I bought the legal versions of most of the tracks. A few are still not legally available anywhere I can find.

Prohibitions Fail

Ebooks today are in “1998 mode” — they are begging to be pirated. If the average Joe or Jane Consumer feels they are being ripped off, or they are being unreasonably denied access to something, they will go looking in the shadows for a supplier, and the law be damned.

We have all seen how successful the “War on Drugs” has been in reducing marijuana use in the West.

Torrent sites at the moment are mostly dealing with hand-scanned Harry Potter books, and odd geeky texts. I don’t think that will last much longer. All it will take is some ticked-off members of 4chan to decide it is time to wage war on the “Big Six” publishing corporations and their agency pricing, geographic restricting acts, and a feeding frenzy of EPUBs and Kindle Books will follow. Face it, removing DRM is at worst a 30-second step to creating an easy-to-torrent file.

Assigning Fault

Front and centre in the “restrict sales to single countries” marching band are best-selling authors and their agents. It is simple to them: selling publishing rights on a country-by-country basis yields a lot more money up front. If “fringe” countries like the Philippines, with a 98% English literacy rate and over 3-million people reading English can’t get the book, who cares, right?

Big publishers are comfortable with this old way of dealing with rights. Their various international divisions will negotiate rights for titles they think will sell, and ignore the rest. Two thousand readers in England would like to buy this book? Sorry, not enough to warrant the buy.

O’Reilly, Kobo, and a few others who understand the difference between print and digital are doing well selling globally. They know that most consumers will pay a reasonable price to buy an ebook honestly. Too many others in publishing do not seem to grasp that.

The coming year will, I think, be “interesting” for the publishing industry, mostly in the nasty sense of that word. Perhaps that is what everyone in the book industry needs — to relive the Napster experience in order to get our priorities right and serve the consumer. As a (small) publisher I would much prefer to not see this happen; as an avid reader who has been around long enough to be cynical, I think it will and probably should happen.