A few weeks ago I got some really good news. My English language ebooks will now be available worldwide. It has been an ongoing frustration for me, and my readers over the past two years, especially those people from countries like Thailand and other parts of the far east.
What made matters even worse, is that when I was self-published they had no problems getting the books. Signing with a publisher generally results in greater distribution (and it certainly did with respects to paper books) but I lost distribution in several key parts of the world just after going with Orbit.
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.
I even got a few angry letters from readers who accused me of "not caring" about readers in their part of the world. 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, and this is now fixed.
The letter I received from Orbit on October 7th indicated 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.
So, I'm hoping that they are now available everywhere. If not, please let me know and I'll check into it. The map indicates which country is serviced by which part of Orbit so if you live in Africa - I would look at UK site of Amazon but if in Thailand I would look at Amazon's US site.
This is a big relief to me. As soon as I found out about the black out countries I immediately contacted Orbit who said they were working on it. It has taken awhile, but given the complexity of the situation I understand why it took so long...I'm just happy that it is fixed now - and those people who started Revelations "back in the day" can now finish the series because Percepliquis and Heir of Novron is now available for purchase.