Get Your Updike – But Only On a Kindle!

Posted on 23. Jul, 2010 by Chris Matney in Book Publishing, Front Page Posts

There was an interesting story in the NY Times yesterday entitled, “Literary Agent Plans E-Book Editions”. There are two points that raised my eyebrows when reading the article.

First, the main thrust of the story is that many traditional book publishing contracts were drawn up long before e-books existed. Since they are not specifically covered in the contract, there is some debate whether e-book rights are owned by the publisher or the author.

A new breed of publisher – one focused only on e-books – is emerging to fill this gap. They offer better terms to authors than traditional paper-based publishers, and they can get the e-book rights from the author exclusive of the paper book rights already held. Andrew Wylie, certainly a big name in the industry, is doing just that with his company, Odyssey Editions.

With a reduced overhead, Odyssey Editions is offering authors significantly better deals for their e-book contracts than they got for paper books. This brings up the interesting conundrum that each new technology may very well allow authors to “go back to the well” in selling the rights to their books.

The second point is the disturbing one – Odyssey edition books, including some by Saul Bellow, John Updike and the like, will ONLY be available on the Kindle. In my blog a couple of days ago, I warned that “forcing readers to choose between being able to read Clancy or King depending on their hardware” was one of the fundamental mistakes publishers can make in driving e-book adoption in the marketplace.

While Odyssey Editions is only giving the exclusive to Amazon for two years, this is the short-sighted thinking that really hurt the adoption of so many technologies – just think HD DVDs. And, in the same way, I can see a new technology leapfrogging the current e-book readers if they drive customers into proprietary solutions.

What are your thoughts?

3 Responses to “Get Your Updike – But Only On a Kindle!”

Todd Newton 27 July 2010 at 8:23 am #

I actually heard a story on NPR about this today. The newsies seem to think it’s an issue of royalties, rather than one of technology or distribution. Do backlist bestsellers really make up their bottom lines??

I do love that Random House basically said, “Not only can you NOT do that with our titles, but we’re no longer publishing anything you represent… ever.” A giant throwing their weight around, we’ll see how far that goes.
Frank Fiore 24 July 2010 at 12:14 pm #

“I can see a new technology leapfrogging the current e-book readers if they drive customers into proprietary solutions.”

Chris. I you hinting at Book 3.0 being the leapfrog technology?
Todd Newton 23 July 2010 at 11:41 am #

I couldn’t agree more. This is a similar problem to the one the cell phone companies & services providers have created in the USA. I can only get my iPhone through AT&T (up until now, who knows about the future). While this is great for AT&T, and previous AT&T customers as I was, it forces Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, not to mention their customers, into a strange position. What if we’re unsatisfied with AT&T’s service or rates? They didn’t manufacture the iPhone, so why does it have to be proprietary to their service offering? Since only AT&T (and, assumedly, Apple) benefit from this setup, what is the draw for their customers to support this broken business model?

With technology it breeds competition, of course, like with the DROID and other smart phone technology releases. But do authors actually “compete” amongst each other? It doesn’t take that long to read a book, and people don’t generally shun authors simply because of their book format… so what’s the need for competition among technologies in publishing? Does it really make that much difference, profit-wise? I just don’t understand the logic behind this kind of maneuver, because it seems incredibly short-sighted.