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Top Authors Make eBook Deal, Bypassing Publishers
RobotRunAmok writes "Home to 700 authors and estates, from Philip Roth to John Updike, Jorge Luis Borges, and Saul Bellow, the Wylie Agency shocked the publishing world yesterday when it announced the launch of Odyssey Editions. The new initiative is selling ebook editions of modern classics, including Lolita, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Updike's Rabbit tetralogy, exclusively via Amazon.com's Kindle store, leaving conventional publishers out of the picture. The issue boils down to who holds digital rights in older titles published before the advent of ebooks, with publishers arguing that the ebook rights belong to them, and authors and agents responding that, if not specifically granted, the digital rights remain with the author. Publishers and authors are also at loggerheads over the royalty that should be paid for ebooks: authors believe they should be getting up to double the current standard rate of 25%, because ebooks are cheaper to produce than physical editions. (Amazon pays authors 70%.)"
Short answer: They've already done so, they got sued, and the publishers lost.
Random House's standard contract specified they had the exclusive right to sell the works in "book form". The authors asserted, and the courts agreed, that "book form" did not include electronic rights.
Not only are you not a lawyer you don't know much about contracts or publishing rights either. Publishing rights are sold on a country by country basis and format by format basis. If you sell a book to be marketed in the US your publisher has no right to sell it in the UK or Australia unless they negotiate that separately. Same goes for audio books. So those advances are paid for the rights that were negotiated in the contract. Given that's the case then why would you think a pre-digital paper publishers have the right to publish digitally unless they've negotiated it or you work for a publisher who's interested in spreading FUD? The older contracts don't include those rights. Unless a contract is written specifically to allow future changes then things don't get grandfathered into a contract. They have to be renegotiated.
They have next to no costs associated with the make/move/sell aspect of digital distribution.
Devil's Advocate here. Publishers are entrenched in the front lines of the multi-Billion dollar literature industry. They pay graphical artists to come up with book covers that reflect the nature of the book. This is a cost that does not go away when transitioning to electronic distribution. They pay copy editors to refine the style and grammar of a manuscript. Authors actually make many mistakes while writing their stories... and it would be a shame to sell thousands of copies where the word "teh" pops up three or four times. Marketing and advertising costs... whether through new or traditional media are significant. Though, even using new media, Facebook pages don't create and maintain themselves. It take one or two full time staff to properly drive eyeballs to the advertisements so that sales can be made.
I'm not arguing that publishers aren't charging too much. I'm just pointing out that their role is not completely diminished because of a shift from print to digital.
Then I'll explain it: convenience. Kindle and iTunes work and are affordable.
The Kindle software group has done a decent job getting their reader software on a bunch of different platforms. Install the software and your library shows up.
iTunes is mostly selling MP3's these days and it doesn't get much safer than that.
Once upon a time, books were expensive and well made. These days, they are cheap and start yellowing before you are done reading them. Many publishers have even started using crappy paper for hard covers. As a result, I've started looking at books about the same way as I do a magazine. Read and toss. eBooks hang around longer on my hard drive (or in my Kindle library), but I don't have any real attachment to them.
I can see if you are a physical book collector or like to maintain a collection, eBooks will seem stupid. To each his own.
Ack! I said MP3s and I really meant to say unencumbered files. I guess in my mind the two are equivalent.
The issue isn't one of copyright but contract. Actors, writers, and directors in particular are all bound by contracts--either the boilerplate contracts from their respective guild (SAG, WGA, DGA) or a specific contract for the film in question. Those establish royalties and may or may not permit additional control over the film.
To use a film clip in a TV show, for instance, you may need permission not only from the studio, but also from the actors, writers, and director, depending on how their contracts were negotiated. Even if you're the studio that owns the film, you would have to do this.
A studio may have exclusive distribution rights for a film but that doesn't mean they have unfettered control over its use or get all the royalties. When it comes to major studio films, who holds the copyright just isn't that important because so many contracts are involved that divide control and proceeds among so many people.
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