ABSTRACT
Publishing is all about selling – or so, at least, every marketing director would tell us. Many other topics with legal significance are involved in the publishing process, of course, as we have seen – copyright, for example – but in a very real sense the act of publishing is the act of selling. No one who has been to Frankfurt could ever be in any doubt about that. However, this chapter is not about selling rights (for this, see chapter 5), but about selling the thing itself – the book, or the journal, the CDROM, or the online service. What happens in legal terms when X sells something to Y? Are any legal duties and obligations imposed on the seller, and are there any exceptions? Are there any specific duties owed to the public? What is the position of wholesalers and retailers?
