A Problem: Ebook Rights, Small Markets & Divergent Digital Growth Rates

Posted by Eoin Purcell - Green Lamp Media Blog

The Frankfurt Book Fair this year was an interesting one for me. It crystalized a few of the many ideas that have been bouncing around in my head. Publishing Perspectives in particular touched on one of the MAJOR issues for smaller market publishers and I wanted to hammer home the point in this post.

I have bad news for publishers of English language books in smaller markets and by that I mean English language markets outside of the UK and US:
Being a small market english language publisher is going to get harder as digital grows

Put simply I believe that US and (initially less aggressively but shortly with the same fervour) UK Publishers will seek to control world english language rights for digital and with it any rights (enhanced/video/audio etc.) they may need in order to sell ebooks and enhanced ebooks on a global basis. This may spread to an all out claim on world English language right including print, somehow I suspect that’s a ways off for now and the emphasis will be on ebook rights.
Link to Green Lamp Media blog for full piece.