from Hacker News

Why have some publishers stopped printing Indian edition books?

by azeemba on 5/22/25, 11:22 AM with 4 comments

• by billy99k on 5/22/25, 12:00 PM

  I used to be in the book business. We would constantly see students and other sellers try to pass off Indian editions as the regular edition, and charge full price.

  When I was in college, I made the mistake of buying an Indian edition for a class, thinking it was the same. It had much less content and the problem sets were completely different. It ended up being unusable and I had to buy the regular edition.

• by potato-peeler on 5/22/25, 1:06 PM

  > Kirtsaeng counter-argued that the first-sale doctrine rendered copyright no longer applicable

  I remember before this case, books used to have a clause in its first page that resell or distribution is not allowed. So according to the first-sale doctrine, that clause has no enforceability?

• by Rohitcss on 5/22/25, 11:55 AM

  Not surprising at all considering overall lesser demand of printed material in addition to the decline in printing international editions.