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This post was published 1 year 6 months 20 days ago which may make its actuality or expire date not be valid anymore. This site is not responsible for any misunderstanding.
Somebody really smart (I think GB Shaw) once said that the more things change, the more they stay the same. He could easily have written a coda to that saying that it it went double with anything involving publishing. Just as ebooks are causing a revolution in publishing, making more books available to more people more of the time, some forces in publishing are seeking to strangle that revolution aborning.
The weapon they seek to use is exclusivity and it is a very potent weapon indeed. It is the kind of thing that can kill innovation and openness with a single cease and desist letter and it could easily change the ebooks landscape, as chaotic as it is already.
The first sign of this trend can be seen coming from Japan, where the popular novelist Ryu Murakami stunned the publisher of his last 15 books by dropping them in favor of an exclusive deal with that well known literary house…Apple.
Here is what Robert McCrum at the Guardian has to say about it…
The battle for the ownership of the book is still being fought on several fronts. It’s a confusing scene, hard to interpret. Depending on where you look, through the fog of IT innovation, there are either white flags or fluttering standards of resistance.
Earlier this month, in a manoeuvre I predict will soon be seen as a watershed, the admired contemporary Japanese writer Ryu Murakami announced that he was publishing his new book, A Singing Whale, in partnership with Apple, as an iPad download, turning his back on his regular Japanese publisher, Kodansha. The book will also include video content set to music composed by Oscar-winning Ryuichi Sakamoto.
The WSJ says that Kodansha is now negotiating a hard cover version with the author, but it is unclear if it will work out.
The trend of popular novelists releasing new work only electronically is a bad sign, while having them do it only for a single device is worse. Ideally electronic and print releases should go hand in hand, or at worst be staggered (as has been done by such authors as Stephen King in publicity stunts). When a book is available ONLY as an ebook, readable on only one device…it is a bit like saying a book will only be available from a single bookseller, or in a single city. Why take a medium designed to expand your audience, and use it to do the opposite?
An even more troubling trend is coming from literary agent Andrew Wylie who is to authors what Don King is to boxers….high profile, somewhat shady, and always controversial but he represents some of the biggest names in the business, which in his case is serious fiction. His new venture is the creation of an ebook publishing imprint, Odyssey Editions, which will have exclusive rights to publish 20 or so novels in ebook form initially with more to come. That is just fine, the problem comes next….Odyssey Editions ebooks will ONLY be available as Kindle books sold via Amazon, and include some extremely important modern works, including Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita”, Phillip Roth’s “Portnoy’s Complaint” and Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man”.
To think that to read Lolita as an ebook you will need to use Kindle software exclusively is something that seems almost like sacrilege to me and utterly unacceptable. Traditional publishing houses are responding negatively but cautiously so far, except for Random House who had already staked claims to many of the ebook titles Odyssey is offering, and had this to say…
The Wylie Agency’s decision to sell e-books exclusively to Amazon for titles which are subject to active Random House agreements undermines our longstanding commitments to and investments in our authors, and it establishes this agency as our direct competitor. Therefore, regrettably, Random House on a worldwide basis will not be entering into any new English-language business agreements with the Wylie Agency until this situation is resolved.
When you consider that the Wylie Agency represents such authors as Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie, this has the possibility of being a very public mess in an industry used to doing these things in private. Wiley, to his credit, says he is thinking about Random House’s response before commenting further.
I expect that other publishers are applauding the stand Random House has taken even as they hedge their bets, since Wiley is laying claim to some of the most popular of what are called Backlist titles. Backlist titles are older books that are either classics or earlier works by currently popular authors. They are the bread and butter in an industry where best sellers come and go unpredictably and since their rights were negotiated a while back, they aren’t covered by ebook deals…therefore they occupy a very gray, and very lucrative, area. Google got a taste of how controversial they can be when publishers went as far as Capital Hill to block their Google Editions plan, which could potentially scoop up the rights to millions of Backlist titles. Google gave ground, but the matter is by no means concluded.
If this trend continues, then we may be adding a scramble for exclusive rights to the price war that is currently going on between ebook leaders such as Apple, Amazon and Barnes & Noble. However unlike the price war, this new wrinkle can only be bad for readers and ultimately authors too by making a wide open medium a good deal more closed.
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