From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2013 19:12:04 -0500

Kevin is wrongly assuming that authors turn over all rights, including
territorial, to publishers. That may be true generally in scholarly
publishing, but it is most certainly not true in trade publishing,
where literary agents negotiate rights deals of all kinds, in all
media and in all languages and in all countries,, on behalf of the
authors they represent, who retain most rights when dealing with book
publishers.

Sandy Thatcher


> From: Kevin Smith <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Sun, 18 Aug 2013 13:04:48 +0000
>
> One thing that should be clear is that whatever negotiating leverage
> there is that could change this situation, it resides with the
> publishers.  Obviously individual readers cannot negotiate the terms
> or conditions of their e-book experience, but publishers could, when
> they contract to provide content to different platforms.  That
> publishers have influence here is shown by the recent court ruling
> that several major publishers conspired to raise e-book prices.  But
> that influence has so far done nothing to mitigate this nonsense with
> DRM.
>
> So even if it is true that publishers haven't done anything wrong,
> they clearly have not done anything to mitigate this wrong.
>
> Kevin L. Smith, J.D.
> Director of Scholarly Communication
> Duke University Libraries
> P.O. Box 90193
> Durham, NC 27708
>
>
> On Aug 18, 2013, at 8:21 AM, "LIBLICENSE" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>>  From: Alex Holzman <[log in to unmask]>
>>  Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 09:43:57 -0400
>>
>>  Elizabeth,
>>
>>  Whoa!  How did we get from Apple i-Pad and Google Books to blaming
>>  this on protecting publishers' investments?  I can't think of a single
>>  publisher who would want Jim's or anyone else's books to disappear
>>  from their reader just because they downloaded an app in a foreign
>>  country that then required re-loading of their books.  Whether Google
>>  Books is licensed to do business in a specific country also has
>>  nothing to do with publishers.  (Whether a specific publisher's
>>  version of a book is available overseas can depend on whether it has
>>  licensed English-language rights in that country, something I view as
>>  a bad idea for ebooks, but that's a different issue and not relevant
>>  here.)
>>
>>  By all means, blame us when we do something wrong, but in this case
>>  protecting publishers' investments had nothing to do with Jim's
>>  frustrating experience.
>>
>>  Thanks,
>>
>>  Alex Holzman
>>  Director, Temple Univ. Press