Patrick Nielsen Hayden Explains eBook Territorial Rights For You

Posted on June 13, 2012    Posted by John Scalzi

In a long and very worthwhile comment in the previous entry thread. If you ever wondered why you can get eBooks in some countries but not others (specifically as it relates to Redshirts, but also more generally) this is the post for you. For those of you who don’t know, PNH is the senior editor at Tor Books, and also my editor there.

I’m turning off the comments for this entry in order to funnel people into that comment thread – and thus implicitly allowing that thread to contain that conversation, even though it is not directly on point to that thread’s original conversation.

That said, please do attempt to avoid one of the common tactics of talking about the nature of current eBook/physical book territorial rights distribution, which is to ignore everything that was actually just said by a person who knows the real-world intricacies of the current state of the publishing market in order to ascend a soapbox and demand publishing should do things the way you think they should, regardless of your knowledge of the field or your appreciation of real-world complexities. I find this tactic tiring.

(This is not the same thing as noting you wished publishing did things differently, or asking why they don’t, but I will note PNH’s comment already explains that aspect pretty well.)