A few months back one of Fantasy-Faction’s forum members wrote to renowned author Michael J. Sullivan (also a forum member) to ask why his books weren’t available to certain countries… to be exact, his post read:
“You really gotta talk to Orbit about their ebook licensing, Michael. I just went to get the kindle one, and of course it’s not available for Australia.”
The reason this post interested me more so than it usually would is that Michael’s books WERE available worldwide when he was self publishing them. However, once he signed a publishing contract with Orbit he found himself in a position where the ability to distribute his books to key parts of the World was significantly reduced – ironic seeing as so many self-published authors dream of signing with a publisher to INCREASE their distribution.
Michael explains: “Here’s the deal. When self-published, I control the countries where the books are sold – and of course I selected them all. When I sold my rights to Orbit I gave something called “World English” which means Orbit, and only Orbit can distribute the books. But territories and rights is still an area that publishers struggle with and as such there were certain countries that were not serviced.”
Sadly, Michael felt the wrath of a number of angry readers from countries where his self-published books were once available and were now not… Some accused him of “not caring” even, evidently thinking Michael had sold them out. Michael says that: “I assure you this was not the case… both myself and Orbit wanted to sell the books everywhere, it was an infrastructure issue that was preventing them.”
Well, it took two years from signing his original deal with Orbit, but finally Michael recieved a letter from Orbit stating that:
Ebooks will go on sale immediately in the UK, Europe, Australia, India and Africa (through HUK’s ebook retail partners) and in South America, the Caribbean, and Asia in the coming weeks (through HBG’s ebook retail partners). The map below shows the division of territories.
Michael stopped by our forums to express his delight at the situation finally being resolved, he wrote: “I’m pleased to announce that as far as I know all ebook licensing throughout the world has now been fixed. It was a very long time in the coming, and you can rest assured that I was an annoying pita to Orbit on this topic. As a previously self-published author it was quite depressing to find that I lost distribution in certain parts of the world when going to a big-five publisher. The whole plan for going with such a large organization was to expand distribution not contract it! Here is a link to learn more about the issue“
Most importantly, fans who started Michael’s series two years ago and have since been unable to get their hands on the sequels will now be able to finish what they started.
Geoff Matthews
Julia Kitvaria Sarene