It has taken me a while to figure out what all the fuss is about this Open Market business that has recently moved from simmer to boil between U.S. and U.K. publishers. At issue, I thought, were the relatively small number of English-language books that were being shipped into foreign—i.e., not primarily English-speaking and -reading—countries that are part of the EU. How many books can that be? I wondered. This isn't about books, or even money, I thought; it's just a power struggle, the publishing version of the sibling rivalry that has always existed between our two countries.
But Hachette's David Young's announcement that from now on, the U.K. version of the house's world-rights books would be the sole English-language editions available throughout Europe—and the passionate reaction that announcement caused—got me thinking there's more to it than simple turf war. The way it works now is that English-language bookstores or departments are free to stock as many editions of a title as they choose: it's not uncommon in a bookstore in Paris, for example, to find both the British and American editions of, say, a novel by Paul Auster. But except for European nations like the Netherlands—where at least as many bookbuyers read in English as in Dutch—the market has historically been confined to expats, members of the armed services and non-American students who've been sent out to read The Great Gatsby in English—and it hasn't made a very large difference to anybody's coffers. But times are changing, as many countries have made English obligatory in school and as the Internet has made original editions readily available. Pricing and timing are also important. Why, for example, would a Portuguese bookbuyer who reads English wait six months for the British-produced version of the American novel he wants to read right now? Or, conversely, when confronted with two editions of a book at significantly different prices, would you buy the more expensive one (often the American), even if it was from the "original" publisher?
Hachette's announcement states clearly that its U.K. division will have sole rights to countries in the EU, and that its U.S. imprints will be allowed to sell into non-EU overseas markets—even those, like India and Hong Kong, that were once British-owned. Still, this divvying up could turn into a slippery slope, especially when—as is not the case with the Hachette plan—U.S. and British rights are owned by different houses: once publisher start to demand control of territories, the whole increasingly English-reading world may become a contractual battleground.
There are already signs that this dispute has implications for authors. Denying both U.S. and U.K. publishers free access to the foreign market "matters financially to only a few megasellers," says agent Brian DeFiore. By far the greater impact will be for the "smaller author," for whom there may be only a few dozen copies at issue, but for whom the stakes are, ironically, higher. "Deals are falling through all over the place," says DeFiore.
Aha, now I get it. It's the same old story. In this, as in many things publishing, it's the little guy that's gonna get squeezed.
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