Best-selling author sells book rights to Amazon

Double Standard Anyone ....

Ah so when it comes to the publisher's rights physical and digital are the same but when it comes to customers rights they are completely different and we must be pay twice. Same stance as the Records labels take then. As a consumer doesn't that just leave you all warm and fuzzy inside.

By koshthetrekkie on 16 Dec 2009

Here here @kosh...

Talk about wanting to have your cake and eat it! Also rather gives the lie to the claim that publishers are "only protecting the interests of authors".

Copyright law needs a major overhaul so it serves the interests of consumers and producers rather than middlemen!

By JohnAHind on 16 Dec 2009

Do the publishers get a cut when books are released as audiobooks? What about films? There must be some precedents for this already.

By Shuflie on 16 Dec 2009

@Shufflie

Audiobooks and films will be specifically excluded (or included) in contracts written a few years ago while ebooks will not. So it is down to litigation to decide what thing that IS mentioned an ebook is most like. With the law's well established propensity for being an ass we can expect some ludicrous judgements in this area!
Films and (to a lesser extent) audio books have significant creative content beyond the author's input so it is reasonable for consumers to pay again. However creatively, ebooks have identical content to printed books and consumers should not have to pay twice if they want both.

By JohnAHind on 17 Dec 2009

Just to amplify ...

It can be argued either way that ebook and print rights are the same or that they are different. What you cannot argue is that they are the same for publisher-author contracts but different for publisher-consumer contracts!
Predictably, this seems to be exactly what the publishers *are* arguing!

By JohnAHind on 17 Dec 2009

Just to amplify ...

It can be argued either way that ebook and print rights are the same or that they are different. What you cannot argue is that they are the same for publisher-author contracts but different for publisher-consumer contracts!
Predictably, this seems to be exactly what the publishers *are* arguing!

By JohnAHind on 17 Dec 2009

It's a major (international) mess!

I have had such issues with recent e-books!

To the extent I contacted a NY Times best-selling author directly about one of his recent books and surprisingly got a response back same day.

His most recent book is available in the USA and Canada as an e-book but rights issues prevent it being sold to a consumer outside those countries. Fair enough - except the other publishers around the world don't sell the e-book version! So there's a version available which the publisher won't allow me to buy because I live in a different part of the world.

Madness.

About time authors went direct imo.

By tonybro on 18 Dec 2009