One of the things I’ve been thinking about lately is how digital books are changing the basic assumptions of publishing – or how digital publishing technology can do so, if people are paying attention. I thought we might talk about that today. (Those of you who are busy eating turkey can catch up later!)

In traditional publishing, the rights to a particular book being acquired by a publishing house are defined by a number of boundaries. The contract will define rights being purchased by:
1/ territory (i.e. world, US, Canada, Commonwealth, etc.)
2/ language (i.e. English, Spanish, Italian, etc.)
3/ format (hard cover, mass market, trade paperback)
and
4/ media (print, motion picture, audio, as well as a ton of subsidiary rights like calendar rights, action figure rights, etc. As an aside, yes, I would love to exercise my action figure subsidiary rights for Dragonfire. I see them like transformers, hunky guys that turn into dragons. Wouldn’t that be fun?)

This allows a certain shorthand in making offers and deals – an editor might, just for example, offer for “US English in mass market” for a paranormal romance. (That she’s talking about print rights is assumed.) Theoretically, the publishing house should be buying just what rights they want to exercise, and that’s what the author wants to sell to them. Of course, publishing houses believe it’s better for them to acquire as many rights as possible at the outset, just in case it turns out they want them later. The balance is negotiated by the author’s agent. Once upon a time, digital book rights tended to fall into category #4, but now they are often assumed to be part of #3. Both parties want to hold the digital rights, perhaps even more than the print rights. The working standard is still on the move in these changing times.

What I want to talk about today is the first boundary, which actually is based on borders – territory. The acquisition of rights based on specific geographic regions is a system that derives from physical books and their distribution. If you think about it, it makes sense that a given publisher might have lots of bookseller connections within a certain territory and not within another. It’s been pretty common for world English rights to be divided – into US and UK, or US and Commonwealth, or even to be broken down by individual English-speaking countries – because distribution of physical books in each territory would be an area of specialty. It also makes sense that traditionally, the non-US English release of a physical book published by a US publisher might be delayed in some of those other territories. Australian readers have been accustomed to needing to wait, quite literally, for the ship to come in. In Canada, I am never quite certain whether a book will be published simultaneously here as in the US or as in the UK, never mind which cover will appear on the book once it does become available here.

Sometimes, a big publisher will acquire world English but sell some of those rights to another publisher, perceived to have better connections in a given market. For example, for my Dragon Diaries YA trilogy, Penguin US acquired world English rights, but sold UK-Commonwealth English rights to Allison & Busby for the first two books. That’s why FLYING BLIND and WINGING IT have different UK covers. (In Canada, we could buy either edition, which is just weird. The content in both editions, btw, is almost identical. I thought we would revert to UK spelling in the UK edition, but that wasn’t the case. I seem to remember that we caught a typo or two in the UK edition that were missed in the US editions and corrected them in those books.) A&B did not acquire the rights to BLAZING THE TRAIL, so there is no separate UK edition of that title.

Arrangements like this have been characteristic of the print book market. You can see that it becomes odd, though, even with print books when we can so easily shop online. Readers all over the world can order print titles from US publishers in English and have them shipped. They might pay higher postage if the book isn’t physically distributed in their territory, but they can get it. Twenty years ago, that wasn’t the case.

As the publishing market shifted to digital books, traditional publishers approached the digital market in the same way that they had always done business – even though their model was based upon selling printed books. So, we see the 60 to 90 day delay in availability of my Dragonfire books outside of the US, in both print and digital editions. In the UK and other Commonwealth countries, the on sale date is several months later than the US on sale date. In Canada, we’re in the middle – the digital edition goes on sale at the same time, but the print book may be delayed for several weeks. (I’ve no idea why this is so, but the pattern is clear.)

What I recently realized is how nonsensical this all looks from the perspective of digital books. There are no books to be shipped. There is no need for specific connections with distributors and booksellers, when the most vital link in selling digital books is with the end consumer. Geo-political boundaries are irrelevant in this world. As book titles shift to “digital-first” editions, on sale dates should be simultaneous internationally.

There also are no additional costs in distributing to these markets. Those of us outside of the US have become accustomed to seeing our books cost more, courtesy of these boundaries and expenses. Who do you think pays the cost of shipping those books to Canada or the UK or Australia? Who do you think carries the cost of another publisher being involved and creating another edition? The reader does, of course. Eliminating those extra editions and shipments also eliminates cost, which lowers the price to the end consumer.

The thing is that there weren’t always separate editions done of individual books in different markets. Even if they were done in US and UK, a reader might be out of luck in Australia. Beyond that, there are the individuals scattered throughout the world who would never see an English language edition in their territory. If you were an English reader living in Paris or Bangkok, for example, it might have been very hard (or very expensive) for you to get physical books in English to read. There was little chance of an English print edition being published and distributed in that specific territory, since it wasn’t perceived to be an English-speaking territory. Now, English readers all over the planet can easily acquire digital books in English. There’s a massive online bookstore available to them, at any point in time. This is a tremendous benefit of going digital.

(As a side note, it is interesting to see how successful English language books are proving to be on Amazon.DE. This was a market that was perceived to be reading only in German, so the only edition that might be distributed there would be a German translation of a specific book, if a German publisher were interested. The high numbers of English units being sold through this portal prove that there has been to date a massive unexploited market for English novels in Germany.)

In a very real sense, the only true boundary in digital books is language. Why shouldn’t the world English edition be available in all territories simultaneously? There’s no reason for a second publisher to get involved or a second edition to be produced. Even if it’s perceived that a different cover would perform better in a specific market, changing the cover for another market is very easy in the digital world. And I would argue that the diversification of markets is becoming smaller with every passing year, because of the internet and the fact that we all partake of a very similar cultural experience online.

As a Canadian and a reader, I’m thrilled to see indie-pubbed books available to me in digital format simultaneous to the US release and at the same price point. As a writer, I know I’ve always had a lot of audience in UK-Commonwealth, and I’m excited to be able to ensure with my indie-pubbed books that they get those titles at the same time and the same price as my US readers. Here’s a big thank you to my UK and Australian readers! From here on out, world English publication of my titles will be simultaneous in digital.

Next week, we’re going to talk about another dissolving boundary – that of author brands and pseudonyms. They’re not gone forever, but their usefulness and applicability is certainly changing.

What changes have you noticed in the shift to digital books? If you live outside the US and read in English, are there more titles available to you? More diversity? Better price points?