Just a few minutes ago, I received a tweet from Mashable with the news of Amazon's new and exclusive publishing deal. I could not help but retweet as well as re-publish on this blog. All of us involved in book sales and publishing need to take note of the deals taking place in the market. Who knows what might happen next? The piece by the way was written by Lauren Indvik and can be found here: http://bit.ly/bDIww1
Anyway, here is the piece in its entirety:
The Wylie Agency has signed a deal to bring the e-book editions of 20 classic titles, including Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, exclusively to Amazon’s Kindle Store for two years, the company announced Thursday.
Publishers were, unsurprisingly, less than pleased. Today, Random House declared in a statement that the trade publisher would “not be entering into any new English-language business agreements” with the agency, which represents such illustrious authors as Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie, “until [the] situation is resolved.”
“The Wylie Agency’s decision to sell e-books exclusively to Amazon for titles which are subject to active Random House agreements undermines our longstanding commitments to and investments in our authors, and it establishes this agency as our direct competitor,” a spokesperson for the publishing company said.
The problem is that it’s still unclear — at least to Random House — who has the rights to publish the electronic versions of older titles, whose contracts don’t specify those rights because e-books simply didn’t exist when they were drafted. Random House sent a letter to literary agents in December 2009 asserting ownership of those rights, citing clauses in older agreements that allow the company to publish texts “in book form… in any and all editions.”
Agents and authors were surprised to receive the missive, given the outcome of a lawsuit between Random House and RosettaBooks LLC in 2001. According to the WSJ, Random House tried to prevent the latter from selling the e-book editions of works by William Styron, Robert Parker and Kurt Vonnegurt Jr.; the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled in RosettaBooks’s favor, claiming that Random House’s earlier contracts didn’t cover e-books. A federal court of appeals affirmed the decision.
The Future of E-book Distribution
The latest dispute between the Wiley Agency and Random House is, then, just one in what promises to be a long line of disagreements — and not just about older titles. Perhaps inevitably, authors and their agents will increasingly make deals directly with the likes of Amazon and Barnes & Noble’s e-book division to distribute the electronic versions of their work.
Several, including Stephen King, already have. The bestselling suspense author released his most recent novel, Blockade Billy, as an e-book one month before releasing the hardcover version in the U.S. and Canada. He also distributed a short story, “UR,” exclusively through the Kindle Store in February 2009, shortly after the Kindle 2’s release.
Most recently, widely read Japanese author Ryu Murakami revealed his plans to publish his next novel on the iPad, stepping around his publisher and securing a greater share of the sales revenue in the process. According to Fast Company, publishing houses typically offer authors and agents 25% of the net proceeds of e-book sales. By releasing his novel directly in Japan’s App Store, Murakami and his partners will receive up to 70% of sales proceeds; undoubtedly, bestselling authors could negotiate with Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc. for even more lucrative deals.
It thus makes sense that authors and literary agents wouldn’t want to fork over e-book rights to their traditional publishers, when they could potentially profit more by making deals directly with e-book retailers. And traditional publishers are of course worried, as e-book sales are making up an increasingly greater share of overall sales; earlier this week, Amazon revealed that it is now selling more e-books than hardcover books.
What This Means for Consumers
In the end, however, it’s the consumers who will suffer most. While it’s great that 20 works of classic contemporary literature are now available in electronic format for Kindle owners, it’s not so great for those with a Nook, iPad or one of Sony’s or Borders’s low-priced e-readers.
Unless different arrangements are made, consumers can expect a frustrating future in e-book purchasing, in which popular titles and authors are made available only on certain platforms — at least until a set number of copies are sold or period of time elapses, at least. Amazon and its ilk will offer increasingly competitive deals to secure top selling authors, and users will have to toggle through an array of apps and devices to download the books they are looking for.
As Devin Coldewey of Crunchgear cheekily suggests, consumers may return to the “portable, DRM-free, region-agnostic” paperback for convenience’s sake.
Who do you think is in the right here, Random House or the Wylie Agency? Do you think the dispute and other recent developments bode well or poorly for the future of the publishing industry? Share your thoughts in the comments.
No comments:
Post a Comment