25.08.10 - Philip Jones in The Bookseller
In a surprise joint statement issued by Markus Dohle, chairman & c.e.o of Random House, and Andrew Wylie, president of The Wylie Agency, the two companies said they had "resolved" their differences over the disputed Random House titles included in the Odyssey Editions e-book publishing program.
The statement read: "These titles are being removed from that program and taken off-sale. We have agreed that Random House shall be the exclusive e-book publisher of these titles for those territories in which Random House US controls their rights."
The Financial Times reports that the agreement, hammered out over two hour-long meetings between Wylie and Dohle, did not offer preferential terms, but was "consistent with agreements we’ve reached with other literary agencies for other backlist e-book rights".
The move leaves Odyssey Editions with just seven titles that will be sold exclusively via Amazon's Kindle device for two years as part of a deal originally heralded as a "power shift" in the industry. Amazon has not commented on the development, and all the titles currently remain available internationally.
A spokesperson from The Random House Group UK said the titles were in the process of being removed, and added: "We are pleased to resume our normal working relationship with the Wylie agency, with several new titles in discussion, and are now working with them to have the four Random House UK backlist titles [London Fields, Midnight's Children, The Collected Stories of John Cheever, and Portnoy's Complaint] available as ebooks for sale as soon as possible."
The dispute began in July when agent Wylie made good a threat to bypass publishers who he felt were not offering his authors a high enough royalty rate for digital rights. But Wylie's launch of an e-book publishing company, with a 20 strong debut list that included titles by Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis, Philip Roth, and John Updike, brought swift condemnation from Random House US, Macmillan US chief John Sargent, and UK bookseller Waterstone's.
As a result of a number of its titles being included Random House said that on a worldwide basis it would not be entering into any new English-language business agreements with the Wylie Agency until this situation was resolved. The new statement said Random House was "resuming normal business relations with the Wylie Agency for English-language manuscript submissions and potential acquisitions".
The statement concluded, "we both are glad to be able to put this matter behind us".
More at The Bookseller.
And The Huffington Post.
No comments:
Post a Comment