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Interesting article here about how the end of an international rights regime in India could spell a flood of cheap imported literature that will ruin the domestic marketplace.
If you think Amazon’s predatory pricing is bad, just wait till India sees paperbacks by the pound:
But under the new version of the law, such rights will no longer be necessary. Like Singapore, Hong Kong or Dubai, any book published anywhere in the world can be legally sold in India. There will be no such thing as Indian territorial rights any more. Predicts Thomas Abraham, who heads Hachette India: “There will be free inflow of books from foreign countries, at dirt-cheap prices.” The near-unanimous view from publishers: this will be bad for readers, writers and publishers alike.
But why should the prospect of “dirt-cheap books” be bad for Indian consumers? Well, what Indian publishers fear is a flood of remaindered books. These are copies of books that their original publishers can no longer sell in their home markets, and sell off by the weight – literally. Thousands of copies of such books – remaindered after six months or so following their publication – can be bought by traders and then sold at low prices throughout India.
For Indian publishers, this is a nightmare, for buyers are expected will flock to these low-priced editions, ignoring their titles. This will put their entire business in jeopardy, in turn severely affecting their ability of commission and publish Indian authors. As a result, warn the publishers, Indian writing in English could die a swift death.
Dunno exactly how apocalyptic this might be (I’d be interested to know how Hong Kong, Dubai, et al. are doing with this rule in place), but this argument does make a lot of sense.
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This rule is in effect in the Philippines where I live-there are three major chains of book stores here-every once and a while they will have remaindered books for sale from places like Oxford Classics, Barnes and Nobles and others -(the books have a think black line drawn on the side-I guess to prevent them being sold as new)-they are normally sold about about 30 to 10 percent of the list price-of course they are items that may not sell well here as they did not sell in the USA, UK or Australia-the book stores through them out on special tables by the price they are asking for them-most of the books are “junk books” but last sale I got some nice Oxford Classic Victorian novels-it seems to have little or no impact on normal sales as these are books that would not normally be sold-as the sale goes on they lower the price-unsold items are sent to another store in the Manila area (huge city) to see if they can be sold there-if ultimately unsold I am not sure of they pulp them or what-