Wylie threatens broad digital expansion
By Kenneth Li and John Gapper in New York
Published: July 29 2010 22:40 | Financial Times

Andrew Wylie, the literary agent whose exclusive deal with Amazon.com last week stunned the publishing world, has threatened a broad expansion of his digital publishing business to include up to 2,000 titles if traditional publishers refuse to improve digital royalties.

Mr Wylie has established a digital publishing company called Odyssey Editions and struck a deal with Amazon, giving the online bookseller exclusive access to 20 classics including John Updike’s Rabbit series and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man for a two-year period.
Random House, which owns the book rights to many titles on Mr Wylie’s list, has suspended dealings with his agency because it contests whether he holds these e-book rights.

In an interview, Mr Wylie said he preferred to negotiate a deal with publishers that combined the print and digital rights, but had failed to reach a satisfactory compromise after nine months of discussions with all large publishing houses.

“If we do not reach an accord, Odyssey will grow. It will not publish 20 books, it will publish 2,000 and have outside investors and make itself available to other agents,” Mr Wylie told the Financial Times this week.
“I am only trying to make a point in order to underscore the importance of getting the right terms with a view to uniting the two [print and digital] revenue streams,” Mr Wylie said.

Other publishers, including Penguin, which like the Financial Times is owned by Pearson, say that Mr Wylie has limited bargaining power because rights to e-book publication have been written into authors’ contracts since the mid-1990s. The 20 books selected for the Amazon deal are from before that date.
Full story at FT.