Just week’s ago Andrew ‘The Jackal’ Wylie was calling for a better deal for his authors on e-books or he’d skip publishers entirely. Now the Guardian reports he’s taking his author stable straight to Amazon.
Under the e-imprint Odyssey Editions, Wylie’s most popular authors will re-release some of their most popular titles including Lolita and Midnight’s Children. It presents a big threat as the Guardian says “Slice off the biggest names, the most valuable backlist items from any publisher’s list and the business model is up in flames.
Publisher Random House has already written to Amazon “disputing their rights to legally sell these titles” because Odyssey is a “direct competitor”. Throwing down the gauntlet to the Jackal, Random House have announced they won’t be “entering into any new English-language business agreements with the Wylie Agency until this situation is resolved”.
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If anything this is a wakeup call to publishers. If you're not going to give authors a decent slice of the profits then they'll go independent. It's happened with the recording industry, looks to be happening in the publishing industry with the advent of more portable devices to read e-books.
While I don't want publishers to disappear, I do think they need to learn to take a more generous stance when it comes to signing authors on.
sortius
26 July at 04:25PM