Unhappy with Tor

[a_cubed]

I recently ordered the new Steven Brust Vlad Taltos novel “Iorich” from Amazon.co.jp. I’ve been waiting since January 2010 for it to come out in paperback. Always annoying that long delay before a paperback, especially when they suddenly start producing hardbacks of a once a year series. I don’t like having different types in a series, particularly a long one like this and since i’ve got the rest in standard sized paperback, I’m going to continue in that vein. So, Amazon in Japan finally indicated it was due in January 2011 and I ordered it. Then they kept pushing back when it would be sent and finally they pushed it back to January 2012! WTF? Checking on Amazon.com, it turns out that Tor have now produced a trade sized paperback (8.2inches tall) which unlike my Harry Dresden books is too big even to fit on the shelf that the others are on. So, we now have the hardback appearing in January 2010, the stupid size paperback in January 2011 and the mass market sized paperback not until January 2012. A wait of two years until the ordinary paperback comes out. The book publishing industry seems to be hell bent on following the music publishing industry into screwing itself up by pissing off its regular customers. They’re insisting on DRM for ebooks, they’re not making all the older even very popular material available in ebooks (Pratchett’s Discworld isn’t all available for example) and even when they do they’ve screwed up the permissions so there isn’t a worldwide appearence (sometimes if you want it in ebook form it’s out but the only way to get it is illegitimate), and their core product is being over-squeezed in its traditional market in a way that annoys regular purchasers. Way to  destroy your own industry, guys. I don’t have an ebook reader, but if I did I’d be tempted to download one of the versions available on bittorrent. Especially since the legitimate version seems to be Nook only (that’s right, restrict your market – great way to keep your customers).

Originally published at blog.a-cubed.info

Comments

[tobyaw]

One has to be happy that computer-book publishers O'Reilly and Pragmatic Programmers release their ebooks internationally, without DRM, and typically in a variety of formats.

Why can't fiction publishers follow their lead?

[a-cubed.livejournal.com]

Having complained about it, I do know some of the reasons, from talking to Charlie Stross. The rights for English language books are traditionally sold in two blocks" the US and the UK segments of the world. There is a standard agreement that only certain territories are covered by these rights, with a third block *that&s been growing over the last twenty years( consisting of places where both can be sold. For instance Malaysia appears to be in this free block and while in a bookstore in Kuala Lumpur I&ve seen UK and Us editions of the same book on sale. Very rare in new book stores in the UK or the US.
Anyway, these two blocks of rights (almost always done for fiction, and for some non-fiction) have been including electronic rights also geographically separated ever since the publishers thought about it (mid-90s basically). However, it's only reently that anything has been done with these rights, with the rise of Google Books and ebook readers. The problem is that different publishers have different approaches and quite a few of them are still not set up to produce ebook versions of all (or sometimes even any) but they still all insist on gaining the rights if you want a publishing contract with them. Since ebooks are still the minor part of the market it's unusual for fiction to be able to keep the rights out of the standard contracts. Some non-fiction writers such as Larry Lessig have managed to persuade their publishers to separate the physical publication rights and in his case he's even got them to agree to an electronic release under CC-BY-SA. That's something I'd like to do if and when I get any non-fiction research books written (it's alsmot inconeivable that it would work for a textbook as opposed to a research monograph). It's inertia, cowardice and dog-ion-the-manger attitudes combined with an imbalance of power in negotiations (each individual author needs one of the small number of major physical publishers more than the publisher needs any individual author).
Groups like O'Reilly typically buy worldwide rights in the first place and being tech-oriented are much more progressive with new technological solutions.

[tobyaw]

I’ve read some of Stross’s blog posts about the way that publishing works, and they were fascinating. While one can see why the system has developed as it has, it is far from meeting readers’ (and customers’) needs.

In an internet-linked world, regional rights is a quaint concept. Hopefully authors and publishers will find a way to fix the system.