Random House, the country's biggest trade publisher, announced today that it will no do more English-language business with the Wylie Agency. This parting of ways was brought on by Wylie's decision to launch an e-book line through Amazon alone.
At the heart of this dispute are e-rights to books that were published before e-rights became an issue.
Kindle Nation Daily has a take on this that's well worth the reading.
According to them: "Random House, which owns the print rights to many of the newly published ebooks, sent a letter last December to literary agents claimed that it owned digital rights to the entire Random House print catalog even if those rights weren't specified in the publisher's contract. While that sounded like a warning salvo from Random House foreshadowing litigation against authors and agents' disaggregation efforts concerning ebook rights, the publisher has yet to file any lawsuits and has instead focused on negotiating agreements with agents to publish backlist titles in digital form."
Hmm. Asserting ownership of unspecified e-rights? Sounds like the e-version of a land grab to me.
So, not exactly a huge surprise that Random House hasn't filed suit and is focusing on negotiating agreements on e-rights (after the fact).
Wylie's move has been called "visionary" by other literary agents. To quote Steve Ross, a former publisher who now works as an agent with Abrams Artists Agency, "As e-book sales continue to grow and platform and distribution options continue to evolve, the role of the agent as a provider of full service to their clients is going to have to evolve with it."
Uh, yeah, I'd think so.
As for Amazon, what else could you consider this except a smart business decision?
UPDATE: Here's Amazon's press release about this. Notice the slightly different spin.
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