From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2012 10:23:57 -0600

I think Mike Shatzkin has hit the nail on the head with this comment
added to the discussion:

At 2:33 PM +0000 11/5/12, The Scholarly Kitchen wrote:

> Thanks for the link to my speech on DoJ. We certainly agree that the government is misguided here. While I am comfortable with much of your diagnosis of the problem, I think you're off base in the solutions you suggest. The idea that the publishers could in some unified way tell Amazon anything, let alone that they have to change their ebook format, was effectively squashed by the recent DoJ action. Publishers will do anything today to avoid the appearance of collusion, and I see no way to implement the industry-wide strategy you propose vis a vis a trading partner without risking serious legal jeopardy. And they won't. Furthermore, you blame the wrong parties when you tell publishers not to divide up rights. While I agree that there is strong logic for one ebook distributor per language in the world, rather than breaking it up the way we've always done for print, that decision doesn't rest with publishers. It rests with agents. They're the ones who learned (as all do in trade publishing -- although not in other publishing) "acquire rights broadly, license rights narrowly." They believe it is in the authors' best interests to withhold rights territory by territory until they get the best deal. And it is abundantly clear that they can't get a good print deal anymore without ebooks thrown in. This problem reaches ridiculous levels. Kobo has told me about books for which the Canadian rights have been licensed but the US and UK haven't yet. Therefore, they have the file but can't sell it to US or UK customers, who have NO way to purchase it. There's no doubt this is a problem, but the publishers are not in a position to solve it.

Sandy Thatcher


> From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2012 09:07:46 -0500
>
> Here is the best overall account of the mess with e-books that I have yet seen:
>
> http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2012/11/02/why-e-book-distribution-is-completely-and-utterly-broken-and-how-to-fix-it/#comment-63561
>
> Sandy Thatcher
>
>
>   From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
>   Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2012 19:08:45 -0400
>
>  All interests are indeed aligned.  That doesn't mean the situation
>  will change anytime soon.  I don't know the particulars of the volume
>  you referenced, but for many books, in any language, the problem is
>
>   the retrospective clearing of rights.  It has a big administrative
>   cost. (This is also the primary reason for the orphan works problem.)
>   There are also different rights issues for print and electronic books.
>
>   A couple years ago I worked with a client that had set up a
>   French-language Web site for academic titles.  It was print only.  50%
>   of the sales for that site came from outside France.
>
>   Joe Esposito