ebook versions of the Stone Dance?
Christo Taylor-Davies has asked me where he could obtain ebook versions of my books. As it happens, I had just been discussing this issue with my agent.
Way back in 1996, as I was signing my first contract for the Stone Dance books, I had a notion to make a fuss about the ebook rights (they were subsumed under some other category then) because I already had a notion that ‘soon’ ebooks would become a reality. I didn’t – because, at the time, it seemed nit-picking… As a consequence these rights were given willy-nilly to everyone. So that, for example, the UK and US both got rights to an English language ebook version for their ‘own territories’ (incidentally, these are, for the US = the US and Philippines, for the UK = the rest of the world – an interesting vestige of the British Empire, I think). Of course, the internet is a single, indivisible territory – so that I’m not sure it makes any real sense to have two different publishers having English language rights.
Anyway, what’s happening now is that the ebook ‘revolution’ seems on the verge of breaking loose and publishers everywhere are scrabbling around trying to be ready for it. This means that everything is in a great confusion… and that, thus, I have no idea at present as to when proper ebook editions of my books are going to appear. Soon I hope. You can be sure that I will announce such editions here the moment that I hear of any.
Maybe the two separate territories for English-language books have to do with American vs. UK English being used, e.g. color/colour?
My understanding is that ‘territories’ are determined on purely commercial grounds. That UK based publishers take as their territory the whole world outside the USA seems to support this. Since it can have nothing to do with ascendancy or not of UK over US English – after all the dominant form of English around the world must now, surely, be US English – it must have to do with history. That US publishers only have control over the Philippines is very suggestive. It seems to me clear that the territories are those in place at the end of WWII – when British publishers still had ‘world rights’ save for the US and the US’ recent ‘imperial’ acquisition, the Philippines…