Thank goodness for WH Smith and M&B for ebooks. They’re saving me a ton of shipping charges!

Australia is currently reviewing its parallel importation laws in relation to books, and digital copyright is one of the issues that I don’t think has been given much consideration. I agree that it should be seen as a separate rights “territory”.

One important (to me) problem I see with the system Jane proposes is that it’s likely to result in US publishers owning most English language digital copyrights. That kind of sucks for me. It would suck not to be able to get an ebook of an Australian book with its Aussie spelling and colloquialisms. I can see that kind of system cannibalising digital books from smaller English-speaking countries. (Although, hmm, ebook readers might be able to do the simple “translations” in spelling. I’m thinking out loud here.)

Even if I were to assume that US publishers wouldn’t dominate the digital market, Jane’s post assumes that the global market for a digital book is segmented only by language. My (admittedly very limited) understanding is that it’s not. For example, what UK readers want from a Mills & Boon isn’t going to be exactly the same as what US or Aussie readers want. Aussie M&Bs are marketed differently, with Aussie authors prominently featured. We have different covers, different title selections, etc. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard Australian authors talk about having to change some parts of their books for release overseas. How much of that will we lose if all English copies of a digital book were owned by one publisher?

Ideally, what I’d like to see is more variety in digital books, not less, to cater to local language varieties. What I’d like to see is for publishers to buy only those rights they intend to use immediately, rather than the option to license additional rights. I’d prefer that authors have a better understanding of who owns the rights to their works, and greater control over what is done to the work, where, and when.

@Maili

“EU” and “Europe” are not interchangeable words. That’s like saying Norway or Switzerland isn’t part of Europe just because they’re not part of the EU. Europe happens to be a continent, of which the UK is one part. Or are you suggesting the UK is a continent all of its own? If so, I’d have to say that’s your own very personalized interpretation, contrary to any standard geographical definition.

Selene

@Jane – I wish I knew how to strip DRM from my ebooks. I would if I could but I don’t know where to go to get that information.

That doesn’t mean that I would strip DRM for piracy purposes, but it would mean that I could buy a non-Sony-friendly (NSF?) version (possibly for a cheaper price) (sometimes NSF versions are the only ones available), strip the DRM and convert it to some other format which my Sony would read. That would give me a lot more choice.

I also don’t like the idea that I’ve purchased a right to read a book rather than an actual book. I want it to stay mine. After all, in most cases, I am paying (albeit postage and freight free – I’m in Australia) the same price as for a paper book. I want as many of the same benefits as it is possible to have.

I agree with Jane’s view and the general consensus here. Making things harder to get legitimately – whether by geographical restriction or DRM or something else, only pushes people toward the illegitimate. I am happy to buy my books legally – if one can’t do that, one either pirates the copy or doesn’t buy it at all – either way this means a lost sale. Why is this so hard for publishers to see?

Oh and just finally, I didn’t see anything insulting in the original post regarding locations and languages. I think the point was that digital is world wide regardless of locations and languages and publishing needs to catch up. Hear Hear.

(BTW, just to make it clear – I don’t download pirated copies. As an author I lose sales to pirates, and I refuse to do that to another author.)

Please don’t think authors have a great deal more influence than providing information! We can dig in our heels and yowl as much as we like, but if we want to be published, yowling won’t get us there. So we pass around informative links, talk to publishers when opportunity avails, and hope the problems are eventually recognized and clarified. That doesn’t mean they’ll be solved immediately, but it’s one step forward.

So let’s keep the discussion open and informative and let information flow!

Because geographically speaking it very much is, whether one considers it politically part of the EU or not.

Ask any Canadian, Australian, Singaporean and Indian if they feel they’re part of the Commonwealth. Some will say yes and some, no. It’s the same thing with the whole UK and EU debate. A lot of British people I know feel the same way I do. Actually, it’s same with people of Northern Ireland on whether they see themselves as British or not. No different, really.

Whether or not there are a Gaelic speakers in England seems pretty irrelevant to the discussion.

Then, you must have a problem with Ros’s comment:

For many North Americans, their native language is not English [...]

I had that in mind when I made my response to Ros’s “we speak English in England” comment.

I’m sorry you found my responses irrelevant, though. On this note, I will bow out. No hard feelings. :)

Ros addressed the comments that seemed to make the point there weren’t many English speakers in Europe. Your point about your speaking Gaelic seemed rather facetious to me in this discussion. Whether or not there are a Gaelic speakers in England seems pretty irrelevant to the discussion.

Anyway, guess that’s just another illustration why assumptions about where people read English as in books published in the English language are not a valid way of restricting sales by geography.

Next paragraph, you lost me. I can’t tell whether you were being sarcastic or not, but I’ll assume you weren’t.

I never said I was born in England. I made the comment because Ros made an issue out of Jane’s opening paragraph, e.g. nationality and languages, and yet she said in England we speak English. I wanted to point out it’s not always true (which was Ros’s original point, actually).

That said, it’s nuts if you truly believe that a person in England doesn’t speak Gaelic because I have met a few who were born and raised in, say, London that spoke Irish since birth. They are certainly a minority, but it’s no different from meeting British-born people who speak Jamaican, Chinese or Hindi since birth because of their families and local communities they are involved with. If it’s OK for them, why not for Gaelic speakers and their local communities? Why the assumption that Gaelic and Irish speakers are geographically restricted (heh!)?

I’m really curious now. I didn’t realize any part of England spoke Gaelic. Certainly, Scotland, Cornwall, Wales, and Ireland had languages of Celtic origin as well as the Isle of Man and Brittany, but I didn’t think any of those folks admitted they were part of England. I learned there were 6 Celtic languages, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Cornish, Manx and Breton, three of which are considered Gaelic (Manx, Scottish and Irish, and Manx is considered extinct even though there are efforts to revive it). Are there more, in England, where?

Learn something new every day!

We also speak English here. Particularly in England.

I live in England and my native/childhood language is Gaelic, but I do prefer English.

Thanks for your post. I agree that this morning when I first posted I was laboring under quite a few misconceptions. I’ve appreciated this dialogue very much.

Perhaps I’ll look into changing the distribution rights of my most recent book. And this will definitely affect my decision-making when I release any future books.

Piracy is not going to go away as long as there are people who want to read books who can’t. You gave reasons for limiting your distribution to certain English-speaking countries and Europe. But you left out Asia, which has tens if not hundreds of millions of people who read English-language media. They find out about your books but discover they can’t buy them. So either they ignore them (lost sale) or they pirate them (lost sale). When the world was less well connected, people didn’t *know* what they were being denied. Now they do, and they frequently don’t agree with the reasons for their denial. So they justify the piracy to themselves. I know how they feel. I wanted to watch the unedited version of the BBC series Life on Mars. I was more than happy to pay for it, but I can’t get a Region 1 DVD because of the problem of music copyright (it’s regionally restricted and has to be repurchased at great expense for other regions). So I either buy it from amazon.co.uk and figure out where to play Region 2, or I don’t watch it. Or I pirate it. I’ve just given up on LoM for now, but I understand why Americans pirate it. Same with BBC Radio 4 radioplays, which you can either stream or record (using grey-area software) during the week they’re available or go to a pirate site and download.

I completely understand why authors are upset about piracy, it does represent lost sales (although not as much as the download numbers suggest). But as long as our outdated copyright systems remain in place, piracy isn’t going away. And I think the longer people pirate under these conditions, the harder it will be to get them to accept the logic that such products should be paid for. iTunes shows that people are willing to buy something they can get for free if the process is easy and tailored to their interests (as long as they’re in the right part of the world, of course). Maybe we’ll get there with books before all the authors give up.

Why? Aside from the inconvenience, when customers legitimately purchase DRM’d books, they end up in a situation where they have in effect, purchased a right to read a book, not an actual copy of the book.

And frankly as a customer I am damned if I am going to pay the same price for an ebook as a paper book and not end up with an at least semi-permanent copy.

I was not only personally insulted but on behalf of readers everywhere, because of the underlying assumptions you expressed.

It’s a fact, not an assumption, that piracy is occurring. I’m happy that you’re not taking part in it but someone, somewhere is.

And I’m perfectly willing to admit that you and Jane are probably right: Perhaps the solution is to have unsecured books available in all geographic regions. Then maybe fewer people will be tempted to buy pirated copies. But, then again, that might make it more likely that a book is pirated.

Obviously this is the dilemma that the publishing folks are facing. (And the same issue Jane described in her post (#28) above.

However, since hackers have already figured out a way to get around the restrictions of a secured ebook, I guess the secured format is merely providing authors/publishers with a false sense of security. Literally.

Which was exactly my point. DRM does not work. It only pisses off or frustrates the customers who want to buy legal copies and it doesn’t do a thing to keep the folks who wouldn’t buy to start with from acquiring the books by illegal means.

The only DRM format I buy is MS Lit because I, just as Jane, strip the DRM off it immediately (hence I’m annoyed as hell that new books aren’t available in MS Lit lately; according to FW that’s a publisher decision and a mighty bad one, because upwards of 15 authors lost sales just this last month of May).

I then convert the lit file to an rtf file, change the font and increase the font size so I can import it to my Sony reader and comfortably read it in the way that makes the reading experience optimal for me. This also allows me to store the e-book in a file format that will most likely long outlive any current DRM formats/software applications, or if it were to become obsolete will most likely be convertible to a new format.

Yes, paperbacks don’t last forever either, but I have to tell you I have copies of books that are over 60 years old that are in good shape and that I re-read often. I expect the same longevity of my e-books which mobi/adobe DRM does most definitely not offer.

Hopefully that clarifies where I think your logic is not in your own best interest, either as a publisher or an author.